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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3Your Guide to GetResponse Pricing – Which Plan is Best for You?https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/getresponse-pricing
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/getresponse-pricing#respondFri, 13 Sep 2019 14:18:15 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=32440The money is in the list, or so they say. But how much do you need to invest into nurturing that list if you want to see significant results? GetResponse is an email marketing tool that helps you to manage…

]]>The money is in the list, or so they say. But how much do you need to invest into nurturing that list if you want to see significant results?

GetResponse is an email marketing tool that helps you to manage your connections with crucial leads through carefully segmented campaigns and attractive messages. With GetResponse, you can create immersive newsletters that inspire the people on your mailing list and improve your chances of conversions.

There are even options to view and analyze the statistics you collect along the way, helping you to determine which of your autoresponders are the most effective.

As GetResponse continues to invest in more features and functionality for its toolset, it's quickly emerging as more of an all-in-one marketing tool for today's growing brands. In addition to email marketing, businesses can now use GetResponse for hosting webinars, building landing pages, and even managing customer relationships with CRM functionality.

So, how much do you need to pay for a software solution like GetResponse?

That's what we're here to find out.

Read on to learn all about your pricing options with GetResponse, and discover which package is best suited to your needs.

GetResponse Pricing: The Basics

The first thing you'll need to do when you're looking for a price is determine how big your email list is. The more contacts you have, the more you need to pay. If you're dealing with more than 100,000 subscribers, then you'll be asked to contact the GetResponse customer support team for a personalized package.

Pricing starts at around $15 per month for 1,000 subscribers on the “Basic” plan. This goes up to $25 for 2,500 subscribers or $65 for 10,000 subscribers. All of the plans available on GetResponse come with unlimited autoresponders and emails, and there's no extra set-up fee to deal with.

GetResponse also allows you to choose your billing period for a slight discount. For instance, if you pay every month, you'll pay 18% than if you pay annually. Those who buy 2 years of service at a time get the biggest discount, at 30% off per month.

GetResponse Pricing: The Basics

The four main pricing packages from GetResponse are split according to the number of “extra” features you want, besides autoresponders, unlimited landing pages, forms and surveys, Facebook ads, and so on. If you're happy with just the intro features, then you can stick with the “Basic” option. However, most people will want to upgrade to at least the “Plus” package, so that they can get eCommerce options, webinars, and sales funnels.

👉 The four GetResponse pricing plans are:

Basic: $15 per month for 1,000 subscribers for unlimited emails

Plus: $49 per month for 1,000 subscribers

Professional: $99 per month for 1,000 subscribers

Enterprise: $1,199 per month for lists exceeding 100,000 subscribers

There's a huge pricing jump between Professional and Enterprise, but you need to remember that you're getting 100 times more subscribers in your package. What's more, Enterprise does come with some extra bonus features that are particularly well-suited to larger companies.

Notably, the Enterprise plan pricing can change depending on your requirements and list size. The best thing you can do to make sure that you're getting the right quote is contact the GetResponse team. This will give you an option to outline your specific needs with the crew.

GetResponse Pricing: Key Differences Between Plans

👉 All GetResponse pricing options come with a few essential basics, such as:

RSS and blog-to-email functionality

Social sharing tools

Comprehensive list segmentation

In-depth reporting

Split testing

Responsive email design

Autoresponder functionality

Countless email templates

Email database importing and management

However, there are a few important difference between the Basic, Plus, and Professional plans that you'll need to be aware of.

👉 For instance:

The automation builder is only available on the Professional plan or higher – this is the tool that allows you to build sophisticated autoresponder sequences based on user behavior and strengthen your relationship with your audience.

Autofunnel tools for nurturing your customers and improving sales are also only available on the “Pro” pricing plan or higher. You need these to make sure that you're pushing your leads along your funnel.

GetResponse's essential customer relationship tool is only available for Plus plan packages and higher.

Webinar functionality is only available from the Plus plan and above. You only get the option to host webinars for up to 100 people on the Plus package too, which means that you might need to upgrade if you have a bigger audience.

You'll only get a single user account on the Basic plan with GetResponse, which might not be enough for a larger team.

eCommerce tools are only available if you're willing to upgrade to a Plus plan. This means that you can't sell products on the Basic level.

GetResponse Pricing: How is billing calculated?

On GetResponse, your monthly or annual billing is determined according to the peak number of active subscribers you're dealing with in that period. This means that if your subscriber count suddenly goes up, and you're not paying for the right package, then you'll be charged at a higher level.

For instance, if you sign up for the $15 Basic plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, but your maximum list grows to 1,010 people in the third month of your package, you'll be charged for a higher contact count. Although this might be a worrying way to handle pricing for some businesses, it also means that you pay for what you use. There's no need to buy a higher tier “just in case,” as GetResponse will adjust your pricing for you.

One other point to note is that each of your lists are treated separately by GetResponse. That means that if you're adding an email address to multiple lists, that email will count as multiple contacts. This is a bit annoying, as it means you're paying extra to connect with the same person. Saying that, you don't pay for active subscribers, which means that you're not going to be paying extra for deleted email addresses, unsubscribes, or bounced email accounts.

GetResponse Pricing: Verdict

The price you'll pay for GetResponse depends on the size of your email list and the kind of features that you want to access. This pricing structure means that it's easy to scale your tool to suit your needs as your business evolves. You can start by picking the feature list that's most appealing to you, then allow your price to adjust naturally as your subscriber list grows.

Most people will be able to start easily with the Basic plan if you're looking for intro-level features to help you nurture your marketing leads. However, if you want to access some more robust features, you can always upgrade to the next level with the Professional plans. There's a big leap between the Basic plan and the Essential option when it comes to things like eCommerce features and abandoned cart support.

Although GetResponse isn't the cheapest software on the market, it's not the most expensive either. There's also a 30-day free trial available for all levels of the GetResponse pricing tiers, so you can figure out which option works best for you. We'd definitely recommend taking advantage of the trial before you hand over your card details. Don't forget to check out our full GetResponse review for more info.

GetResponse Alternatives

If GetResponse pricing seems too high for you and your budget, then you could always try switching to an alternative email provider.

SendinBlue might be one of the newer email marketing solutions available today, but it's also a highly popular one. There are 40 million emails traveling through this service each day – making it a fantastic alternative to GetResponse.

Not only is SendinBlue great for emails, but it also offers extra benefits in the form of transactional emails and SMS campaigns too. On top of that, all of the content you send through SendinBlue is tested for GDPR compliance, to ensure that you don't fall on the wrong side of any regulations.

HubSpot‘s marketing suite offers a range of great ways to connect with your audience and nurture your leads, including email autoresponders. As an alternative to GetResponse, Hubspot may not be as cost-effective as it first seems. Although you can get a free version of the Marketing Hub, you'll need to upgrade to a more expensive package if you want to unlock the kind of features you can get with GetResponse.

On the plus side, HubSpot comes with plenty of ways to enhance and segment your lists, so that you can ensure that you're sending the right messages to the right customers. Unfortunately, there is a minimum 12-month contract with HubSpot.

MailerLite is probably the most affordable alternative to GetResponse on the market today. It's one of the most popular options around thanks to its simple interface and budget-friendly pricing strategy. With MailerLite, you can get up 12,000 emails per month, without paying a penny. What's more, for 1,000 subscribers, you only need to pay $10 per month for the basic MailerLite plan.

An excellent option for smaller companies, MailerLite will allow you to access all the tools you need to attract and convert customers, including landing page builders, newsletter tools, and plenty of segmentation options too. However, it's not quite as immersive as GetResponse when it comes to building autoresponders.

AWeber is one of the more analytical alternatives to GetResponse on the market today, intended for companies that need in-depth insights into what's happening with their list. With AWeber, you can access fantastic templates for your email newsletters, a range of customization options, and even the opportunity to build landing pages and pop-ups.

Forms and landing page templates on AWeber are a little limited compared to other software on the market today. Additionally, duplicate subscribers will count towards your pricing – which is a pain if you don't have time to double-check your lists.

👍 Pros:

Free trial available

Plenty of integrations with third-party tools

Easy and clean interface

Great customer support

👎 Cons:

Duplicate subscribers count towards your limit

Landing page and form options are limited

Segmentation options are limited

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive AWeber review.

ActiveCampaign

Finally, ActiveCampaign is the email marketing tool that's probably the closest in style to GetResponse, with a fantastic autoresponder solution and plenty of similar tools.

If you're looking for an all-in-one tool for customer capturing, segmentation, and lead nurturing, then ActiveCampaign could be a great choice. However, it is a little complicated for beginners to get used to, and the pricing is quite expensive.

👍 Pros:

Great sequences an automation

Reporting and A/B testing is excellent

CRM and Sales integrations

Visual workflows included

👎 Cons:

Complicated for beginners

No free plan

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Shopify review.

GetResponse Pricing: Other Issues to Note

GetResponse pricing can take some time to get used to.

The fact that your costs change according to your subscriber count means that you'll need to keep a close eye on how many people you're connecting with each month.

It's also worth taking the time to regularly clear out your list and get rid of anyone who's not responding to your content, as this will help to keep your pricing down.

If you're still unsure about GetResponse pricing, the following FAQ might help:

Q: What if I go beyond my list limit?

A: GetResponse doesn't interrupt your service if you go beyond your limits at any time. Instead, the contacts are simply added to your bills, with a list extension fee at the end of the month that ensures that you're paying the right amount.

Q: When can I cancel my account?

A: There are no contracts required with GetResponse, you can cancel at any time by going onto your Billing page and clicking on “Cancel Subscription.” All of your business data is lost when you cancel an account with GetResponse, so keep that in mind.

Q: Can you get a refund from GetResponse?

A: Because it's a pay-as-you-go service, you don't get a refund from GetResponse, even if you cancel immediately after you've been charged for your first month. The initial money won't be refunded in this case, but no additional fees will be taken.

Q: How do paid webinars work?

A: Paid webinars on GetResponse are only accessible when someone pays to join. These are available in the auto funnel feature when you're setting up a webinar with the Professional GetResponse plan.

Q: Are there discounts for non-profits?

A: GetResponse, like many email marketing tools, offers exceptional discounts for non-profit and charity organizations. You can click through to the non-profit page here to see whether you qualify for up to 50% off your chosen package.

Q: How does the Enterprise option work?

A: The Enterprise package is a unique and customized offer that's specifically designed to suit your needs. When you contact the GetResponse team, the sales group will create the package for you based on your unique needs. That means that the price can differ from the one that you see on the GetResponse website.

Q: What is campaign consulting?

A: Campaign consulting is available as part of the Enterprise package. It helps you to make the most out of your GetResponse strategy. If you want to access additional support, you can also get deliverability and account manager consulting included in your package when you contact the support team for your Enterprise pricing.

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/getresponse-pricing/feed0Need to make a knockout online form? Consider Paperformhttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/paperform-review
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/paperform-review#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 07:46:13 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=32138Did you know, as many as half of all online marketers say that inbound marketing strategies, like onsite forms, are their primary source of lead generation? In light of this, more and more people are upping their online form game.…

]]>Did you know, as many as half of all online marketers say that inbound marketing strategies, like onsite forms, are their primary source of lead generation? In light of this, more and more people are upping their online form game. Cue, Paperform.

Want to learn what Paperform could do for your business? Read on!

Who's Paperform?

Founded back in 2016 by a married couple, Dean and Diony McPherson, Papeform came to fruition. They live and work in Sydney, Australia, and share a passion for innovation. So, for them, going into business together was a no-brainer. They soon realized there wasn't a tool on the market that allowed entrepreneurs to create bespoke forms for events and products… and take payments simultaneously.

Cue the birth of Paperform.

👉 Paperform is a tool used by thousands of individuals and businesses to:

Create online forms

Build landing pages

Collect information like names and email addresses

Sell products and services online

Automate repetitive tasks

In short, you can create stuff online without writing a single line of code. It's incredibly easy to tailor your work to meet the exact needs and aesthetics of your brand. You enjoy full control over your choice of fonts, colors, and imagery.

It's incredibly intuitive, making it ideal for the non-techy. You'll have your team trained and ready to use Paperform in no time.

It doesn't matter whether you want to take product payments, register event attendees, or onboard new clients, Paperform has you covered. It's a straight-up SaaS subscription that comes with a 14-day free trial, so customers can try before they buy!

Through BetaList, Dean and Diony caught the eye of AppSumo. The giant approached them and asked whether they'd offer their customers a special deal. This was the real launch they needed to kickstart this venture. The sale went extremely well and led them to bag their first 3,000 paying users. In March 2017 they both left their day jobs to work on Paperform full-time and never looked back!

Paperform For eCommerce

Paperform originally started as an online form builder that could accept payments. But, they quickly noticed more and more people were selling stuff online, and even running their small ecommerce stores with the help of their tools.

That’s why Paperform for eCommerce came into its own in May 2019.

What does Paperform for eCommerce offer?

👉 The answer is simple:

Intuitive product management: Paperform makes it easy to create basic product pages that explain what you have to offer. Customizing them is a breeze, you can change the color, font, logos, images, videos, and much, much, more.

Plenty of integrated payment gateways:including Stripe, 3D Secure, Alipay, EPS, P24, as well as all major credit cards.

Stock level and SKU management: This is straightforward and can be handled via their easy-to-use dashboard.

Set up and run your customer subscriptions through Stripe and Braintree.

Create and set custom pricing rules and conditional logic. This is especially handy if you're a service provider. Creating dynamic order forms for your clients has never been easier.

Automatically generate non-processed payments, i.e., quotes, invoices, and receipts via your form submissions. You can even integrate them with your bookkeeping tools to save even more time.

Set a minimum amount on donations.

Enjoy automated receipt support through emails and custom PDFs.

You can handle refunds and returns from within Paperform's app.

Access to advanced analytics and submission management: Integrate and use Google Analytics and Facebook's pixel to track and monitor your businesses success.

Embed support for taking payments directly through third party sites, e.g., Medium!

Over 1000 integrations to help you fully automate your workflow. You can automatically add customers to your CRM, launch email marketing campaigns, upgrade flows, set up third-party distributions, and update spreadsheets with form submissions.

You can accept an unlimited number of payments.

New features like calculations and calendar bookings are coming soon, which will significantly expand what's possible with Paperform for various businesses.

Standard Paperform Features (Aside of eCommerce)

Paperform has an in-line editor which users reportedly can't get enough of. It's easy and intuitive, just like writing a regular doc. You and your team can create beautiful online forms within minutes.

💡 You should note: Paperform customers really LOVE their custom PDFs — they’re irreplaceable when it comes to generating beautiful reports and summaries.

Depending on the pricing plan you've opted for, here are some of the Paperform features you'll enjoy:

The URL(s) of your form(s) are customizable

Support with handling your custom domain

The option of adding images and videos to your forms

Access to answer piping and question logic

Custom HTML

Basic, advanced, and advanced+CSS forms are all available– both themed and customizable.

A template gallery

Set either required and/or conditional questions on your forms

Access to a scoring (calculation) feature to help you analyze responses.

Paperform Review: Pricing

Paperform offers three paid-for packages: Essentials, Pros, and Agency. It's worth noting, no matter which one you go for you're entitled to create an unlimited number of forms.

You also won't get any nasty shocks in the form of additional fees. You only pay Paperform's subscription and then whatever your chosen payment gateway charges.

If you opt to pay annually, this is what you'll shell out:

The Essentials Plan: $12.50 per month

The Pro Plan: $32.50 per month

The Agency Plan: $82.50+ per month

What You Get with the Essentials Bundle:

10,000 form views per month

1,000 submissions per month

One payment account

One user

Six months worth of upload storage

10MB is the maximum file storage size you can upload at a time.

You can embed five domains.

Access to 100 direct integrations actions per month — alternatively, you can pay an additional $10 for an extra 1,000 actions.

What About the Pro Plan?

You'll get access to everything in the Essentials bundle, as well as:

Unlimited submissions per month

Endless form views per month

Three payment accounts

18 months worth of upload storage

One GB is the maximum file storage size you can upload at a time.

You can embed 30 domains.

What About the Essentials Package?

Again, you'll get access to everything in the previous two packages, plus:

Unlimited payment accounts

Five users (adding another user will set you back an extra $5 per month)

Five GB is the maximum file storage size you can upload at a time.

You can embed an unlimited number of domains.

Paperform Review: Customer Support

Paperform‘s support is exceptional. Having scoured the internet, we've found glowing reports about Paperform's development team. Apparently, they successfully fix customers tech-y issues in as little as 12 hours — time and again. Not to mention, they also provide users with regular updates throughout the process.

On the whole, Paperform is very fast to respond to queries. They also want to hear the kinds of features and services their customers want adding in the future.

👉 In terms of reaching out to customer support, you can either:

Contact Paperform via live chat: To access this feature click the speech bubble icon located towards the bottom right corner of any Paperform page. This allows you to chat directly with a support agent or leave a message if it's after hours.

Email Paperform using this email address: support@paperform.co

Best of all, Paperform gets back to your queries in at least five hours after you've contacted them. But, on the whole, it’s usually much sooner than that!

Alternatively, if you have a quick question, check out their Help Center. They've compiled a knowledge base full of answers to frequently asked questions. Just type into the search bar what you want to find out, and it should populate a helpful response and/or solution to your query.

Who Should Use Paperform?

Paperform's best for people and businesses who want to keep their branding consistent while capturing the details of their customers, website visitors, prospects –or whoever else.

Paperform is especially great for designers, web developers, marketers, agencies, and other freelancers who need to store and process lots of info about a potential product order.

Have you ever used Paperform before? Or, do you know someone who has? If so, we'd love to hear about how you found it in the comments box below. Let's kickstart the convo!

Wish you had an easier way to get the most out of your email marketing?

Don't we all?

These days, email marketing might not seem like the most modern or exciting way to connect with your customers – but it's still one of the most valuable. Email delivers an ROI of around 4400% – that's $44 for every $1 spent.

To take advantage of the incredible opportunities that email marketing has to offer, vendors have invested a significant amount of time and money into creating email marketing systems that allow businesses to send incredible content to their customers according to crucial triggers and schedules.

Mailchimp and SendinBlue are just two of the most popular email marketing options on the market.

Each of these options come with their own variety of fantastic solutions to offer, including state-of-the-art sales funnels, templates, and email builders.

Our SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp review is here to help you figure out which software is right for you.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Pricing

Perhaps the most important thing you'll need to consider if you're a small business looking for marketing help is how much your email tool is going to cost.

After all, you've got to divide the cash you have for marketing between a multitude of different places, including social media, your own website, and even direct mail.

The good news is that both Mailchimp and SendinBlue come with free tiers available. In other words, you can start your email marketing campaign without sending a penny:

Unfortunately, the free packages from both SendinBlue and Mailchimp have their limitations. You're not going to get anywhere near as many features as you'd have if you upgraded to the paid services.

The good news for budget-conscious companies is that even the paid options from SendinBlue are relatively cheap.

Pricing starts at $25 per month for the “Lite” option and goes all the way up to a custom quote for Enterprise brands.

The “Premium” package for $66 per month is probably the best value, as it comes with access to things like Facebook ads, landing pages, chat functionality, marketing automation, and multi-user access. You can also adjust your pricing based on how many emails you think you're going to send each month.

Crucially, you'll need at least the “Essential” package if you want to remove the SendinBlue logo from your email content.

On the other hand, Mailchimp used to be a lot more affordable before the company made some basic changes to its pricing structure. Although there's still a free option, Mailchimp isn't quite as cheap as it used to be.

Saying that it's still cheaper than SendinBlue to get started. The Essentials package begins at $9.99 per month, and the impressive “Standard” package for $14.99 per month comes with access to things like automation, retargeting ads, advanced insights for your audience and more.

Obviously, if you want the best selection of features, then you'll need to upgrade to “Premium,” which is a lot more expensive. However, this package does come with access to multivariate testing – which is a must-have for some brands.

🏅 Verdict: Both companies offer a helpful “free” version for beginners. Mailchimp's paid packages are more affordable, to begin with but get a lot more expensive when you reach the “Premium” tier.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Email Templates and Editing

One of the best things about having an email marketing automation tool in your kit is that it frees you from the stress of having to hire a graphic designer and developer to make attractive and professional-looking emails for you.

SendinBlue comes with access to over 200 responsive email templates. While they're not all as stunning as they could be, the chances are that you'll find at least a handful of options that appeal to you.

If you don't love the email you end up with first-time around; you can edit your content's appearance using the drag-and-drop email builder. The only issue here is that SendinBlue‘s email builder is a little outdated and basic compared to some of the other contenders on the market. There's not a lot you can do when it comes to changing things like fonts and backgrounds.

On the plus side, you can check how your email will look on mobile before you use it, so you're less likely to rub mobile users the wrong way.

Mailchimp also has an incredible range of options to offer when it comes to email templates. There are even more templates than SendinBlue – though not all of them are particularly attractive.

The good news is that one of the things that makes Mailchimp so great is how easy it is to adapt your email to suit your brand and style. If you want to upgrade your emails, all you need to do is tap into the drag-and-drop builder, which comes with a lot more options than you'd get on SendinBlue.

As you play with your email content in the builder, you'll find the option to add images, adjust your text, implement CTA buttons, and more. You can even add links to your social media pages or include a video if you want to.

Even if you don't have a lot of experience using email editors, you shouldn't have a hard time with Mailchimp. Everything fits together automatically, which means that you don't need to worry about aligning different elements to make them look cohesive and professional.

🏅Verdict: While both pieces of software come with a range of templates to choose from, and an immersive drag-and-drop builder, Mailchimp is still the top choice. Mailchimp has more templates to begin with, and a far more comprehensive editing tool too.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Autoresponders and Automation

Once you know how to create some attractive emails for your brand on Mailchimp or SendinBlue, you'll be able to start developing the automated sequences that send those messages to your contacts. The good news is that each piece of software comes with the opportunity to automate your emails relatively easily.

SendinBlue is all about simplicity when it comes to building autoresponders. That means that you're not going to get the most advanced experience in the world. However, if you're a beginner, you may appreciate the fact that SendinBlue comes with so many pre-built workflows to get you started:

You'll be able to build your email campaigns based on the goals that you want to achieve. For instance, if you're going to respond to a customer after a product purchase, click on the “Product Purchase” option.

There's also the option to add a tracking script, so you can send emails to customers based on when they visit specific pages on your website, or when they click on essential buttons:

It's all very straightforward and easy-to-use, which is great if you've never used an email autoresponders software before.

Mailchimp also comes with a range of options to start building your autoresponders based on pre-built templates. However, there aren't quite as many options here as you'd get with SendinBlue.

Unlike SendinBlue, the experience isn't quite as smooth and seamless when you're building autoresponders with Mailchimp. You're limited in the kinds of triggers that you can use to set up automated messages, and your editing options for funnels are pretty restrictive too.

Importantly, one main issue with Mailchimp's autoresponder functionality is that it's only available once you move into some of the higher pricing packages. This means that you won't get access to this functionality if you're on the free or low-tier package.

🏅Verdict: SendinBlue might not be the most immersive automated campaign builder in the world, but it's a lot better than Mailchimp. We'd pick SendinBlue for designing trigger-based autoresponders and tracking your emails.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Analytics and A/B Testing

To get the most out of any email marketing campaign, you need to be willing to constantly test and optimize your messaging strategy.

In today's highly competitive marketplace, it's not enough to just design a bunch of autoresponders and hope for the best. You'll need to track how every headline, subject line, and call to action button performs in your messaging strategy.

The good news is that tools like SendinBlue and Mailchimp help with this testing process, using A/B testing and analytics.

With SendinBlue, you can test your emails and autoresponders in a range of different ways, looking at everything from your email content to the time that you send your messages. Some of the higher-priced tiers for SendinBlue also offer machine learning functionality that allows you to automatically find the best time to send a message for each of the subscribers on your list.

Not only is A/B testing with SendinBlue great, but you also get a range of email reporting tools built into the software too, to help you access some more in-depth insights into how your campaigns are working to help you reach your goals.

On the “My Campaigns” tab, you'll be able to see a performance report for each of your campaigns, which includes details on things like clicks, opens, unsubscribes, and deliverability rates.

From an A/B testing perspective, Mailchimp also offers a variety of ways to test your campaigns. Within the cheaper pricing packages, you'll only have access to a handful of split-testing options. However, in the premium plan, you'll get access to up to 8 split testing variants at a time.

Just as your split tests on Mailchimp will show you which of your campaigns are performing the best, your analytics and reporting feature will help you to decide where you should be focusing most of your efforts.

Mailchimp gives you access to all of your marketing data in the same place. This includes information on growth, engagement, and revenue from your social ads, emails, and automation. You'll also be able to monitor your ROI performance with detailed revenue reports that provide insight into a complete path-to-purchase.

Mailchimp also features its own mobile app, so you can track the performance of each campaign in real-time, even when you're on the move.

🏅Verdict: Mailchimp is a little more advanced than SendinBlue when it comes to A/B testing and analytics – although you do need to pay for higher-tier packages to tap into the best features. Additionally, Mailchimp doesn't have the machine learning capabilities that SendinBlue can offer.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: User Experience

Even the best email marketing tools aren't much good if you hate spending any time using them.

Developers are beginning to focus more on usability when creating their email marketing tools. For instance, how easy is it for you to navigate the UI when you log into your email marketing account, and how intuitive does the email builder feel?

The good news is that the SendinBlue experience is very clean and straightforward. Although the initial homepage is quite packed with information, it doesn't seem particularly cluttered and overwhelming. There's plenty of white space to stop you from getting confused.

SendinBlue is excellent for beginners who don't want too much complexity when they start using their email software for the first time. From the homepage dashboard, you can find out what's going on with your contacts, how your emails are performing and more.

Another great thing about SendinBlue is how easy it is to add contacts to your list. Once you've confirmed that you're compliant with the CAN-SPAM act, all you need to do is upload a bulk CSV file to start building your contact strategy.

Once you have all your contacts loaded into your profile, you'll be able to segment them and send personalized messages to different groups.

Mailchimp also offers an awe-inspiring and straightforward email marketing experience. From the moment you log into your homepage, you'll find everything you need laid out in front of you, from the option to create a new template to essential contact management.

Just like with SendinBlue, it's also straightforward to manage your list from Mailchimp. Once again, you can implement contacts into your account using a bulk CSV file. Once you have everyone in your list on your profile, you'll also be able to separate your customers with segments, which helps you to send more personalized campaigns.

Mailchimp also offers the opportunity to develop your segments using conditional relationships. This means that you can contact each customer based on unique factors, like whether they've responded to your campaigns in the past or clicked on individual buttons.

🏅Verdict: While both Mailchimp and SendinBlue are straightforward to use, SendinBlue might be slightly more intuitive for you if you're a beginner in the email marketing space. It just feels very seamless and straightforward. You don't need to struggle to find any of the details that you need.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Customer Support

Even if you choose the best email marketing tool on the market, there's always a chance you're going to need some extra help from time to time. That's why it's so important to ensure that your email provider can offer some great support.

Since SendinBlue and Mailchimp are so easy to use, you should be able to get by without any support most of the time. However, if you do need guidance for any reason, you can start by looking for it on the SendinBlue help center.

Here, you'll find everything you need to answer your own questions and overcome common challenges with the SendinBlue software. From here, you can also access customer support in the form of instant chat and email if you upgrade to an Enterprise-level package.

Mailchimp also reserves most of its support options for the people who are willing to pay extra for it. You'll need to upgrade to the Premium tier if you want to be treated like a VIP from the Mailchimp team. If you don't have that kind of cash, you'll be left to fend for yourself by checking out Mailchimp's tutorials and guides.

SendinBlue vs. Mailchimp: Finishing Thoughts

So which email marketing tool should you choose?

SendinBlue or Mailchimp?

Both options have their strengths and weaknesses to consider. While Mailchimp is a very comprehensive email marketing tool, it's limited when it comes to things like a simple user interface and immersive A/B testing at lower tiers. On the other hand, SendinBlue is a very simple tool for beginners, but it doesn't have the same great automation options that you would get with Mailchimp.

Choose SendinBlue if you're looking for a generous free plan, excellent reporting, and ease of use. On the other hand, opt for Mailchimp if you're looking for advanced A/B testing at higher levels, excellent integrations, and a range of automation options.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution for the ultimate email marketing tool, but with free trials available for both Mailchimp and SendinBlue, you can always test out your options before you commit to anything.

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/sendinblue-vs-mailchimp/feed0How to Sell Books Online: Everything You Need to Knowhttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/how-to-sell-books-online
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/how-to-sell-books-online#respondMon, 09 Sep 2019 21:39:24 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=31807Whether you love books or you just love selling online, there’s no doubt that selling books online can be a profitable sideline or full-on business. You just need to do your research and work hard at it. The book industry…

]]>Whether you love books or you just love selling online, there’s no doubt that selling books online can be a profitable sideline or full-on business.

You just need to do your research and work hard at it.

The book industry remains quietly successful in the face of enormous competition. Not least because there are tons of different formats we read the written word in. For anyone eschewing paper, there are ebooks and audiobooks.

If you’re interested in cashing in on the book market, here’s our handy guide on how to do precisely that.

How to Sell Books Online: The Facts

Not only that, but according to Statistica, 74% of adults also read at least one book a year. Now, that might not sound like much to the bookworms reading this article, but it contributes towards an average spend of $110 per year per person on books!

98% of consumers say that when they buy books, they read for pleasure, rather than for academic or work purposes. So, if you're considering setting up an online book store, you have a lot of people to work with!

Having said that, don’t forget the academic market. Publishing figures for the higher education industry came to $4 billion in 2017 alone.

Although traditional book stores in the US are still bringing in around $10 billion a year, their revenues are showing a steady decline, mainly due to large online retailers such as Amazon. But, generally speaking, the drop is confined to the more prominent book retailers. It seems that our preference for individual and independent bookstores hasn't waned; instead, it's actually increased. Perhaps this demand for the unique and quirky is something that can be translated to your online store?

👉 So, with all that in mind, let’s take a look at creating a store, and why you might do it, for example:

You're an entrepreneur, and you want to create an online bookstore and sell your products using an ecommerce platform like Shopify.

You’re a writer, and you don’t have a publisher. But, you want to sell your book via platforms like Blurb or Amazon.

You have a ton of used books, and you want to sell them online. Either they’re yours, or you buy them from traditional stores or garage sales, and you want to turn them for a profit on Amazon or Bookscouter.

Don't worry, we're going to cover all three scenarios in this guide.

How to Sell Books Online: Creating an Online Bookstore

Whether you’re a writer who wants to sell their own books or you want to sell other peoples works, it’s essential to decide how you’re going to do it. If you don’t fancy selling books using the traditional online giants, then creating an ecommerce store that's attractive and easy to navigate is essential.

You want people to buy your books, don’t you? This means keeping potential customers on your site for as long as possible. This massively increases the chances of them actually buying something. As such, it’s worth investing time into creating a well-designed and professional-looking website. We recommend NOT setting up your store from an existing blog. Or, if you're already selling other products on an online store don’t just add the books to your site.

Set up something separate.

This means getting a fresh domain name and creating a new site that looks professional, is easy to read, and where payment and shipping options are made simple.

We recommend using Shopify for such an enterprise. Shopify provides you with tons of attractive templates suitable for online bookstores. It’s that simple.

Many Shopify themes come with fabulous features that even novice booksellers can use. For example, there’s SEO optimization, slideshows, free stock photos, options to use multiple currencies and languages, integration with Instagram, and drag and drop page builders. Just to name a few!

These themes are also compatible with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The designs are well laid out, modern and clean looking, so they’re easy on the eye for consumers hungry to spend their dollars on their next best read. With some themes, you can even add video as well as those all-important social media icons. With just a click, you can encourage visitors to explore your Facebook and Instagram pages.

Most of all, it's vital your online store can safely process payments, which is why Shopify is an excellent way to go. Customers are protected, and so are you. All Shopify stores are PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. So rest assured, keeping your customer's payment info and your business data safe is a breeze!

How to Sell Books Online: Incentives

Whether or not you go for Shopify or another ecommerce platform, it’s vital to incentivize your customers. So, do a bit of snooping around and see what your competitors are up to. Don't copy them. Just glean some inspiration.

Whichever platform you opt for, double-check you can set discounts for your stock. For example, a three for two deal, or a percentage off if you buy several books by the same author or genre — it doesn't matter (at this stage) what promotion you run, the important thing is, you get to choose.

Big sites like Amazon do this all the time. But, it’s harder for the smaller store, so you need to be smart about it.

If you can, in addition to discounts and promotions, you should also run competitions and giveaways. Plus, if you’re able to tie-in events with authors to attract a demographic within a specific geographical area, then do. These are all great techniques for incentivizing customers to buy!

How to Sell Books Online: Marketing

Marketing your online bookstore is vital. How else are customers going to know you exist?

Here are some thoughts:

Capture your customer’s names and email addresses so you can customize the emails you send. This is an excellent way of keeping them updated on all your special offers and any new books you're stocking.

You could also send a weekly/monthly newsletter with links to your store, social media handles, and any exclusive coupons you want to give your loyal following. Be sure to include relevant articles as well, for example, if a new book is out and you have it in stock, and you've written a review about it, stick it in the newsletter. Think laterally.

Again, keep an eye on your competitors’ sites. See what they do.

You'd be amazed at how effective this is for fuelling your own ideas!

On a separate note, be smart with your photography. Upload gorgeous book covers onto your Instagram and product pages. Maybe you have the same book with three different covers? If so, ask customers to rate their favorite and be sure they know they can buy them. This is a surefire way to engage with your audience.

Whatever you do to market your bookstore, keep up the momentum. If you spot an interesting book-related fact, post it. Ask for comments. Schedule and automate your posts using an app like Buffer. The possibilities are seemingly endless!

How to Sell Books Online: Do You Want to Sell Your Own Books?

Are you one of those people who don’t just believe they have a story to tell but have actually gotten around to writing it?

If so, congratulations!

Now it’s time to sell it and don't be shy about doing so. If you’re not only a writer but you're also an online marketer and already have an online bookstore, read above!

However, if you have a day job and you just want to sell your book(s) on the side, then using a platform that already has a more significant reach like Amazon or Blurb, is usually the easier route.

Blurb‘s site clearly explains what you have to do to start selling your book with them. Spoiler alert: it doesn't include costly print runs.

They're a marketing and self-publishing platform that’s been around since 2005. Blurb empowers creators to design, publish, promote, and sell their books online.

It allows you to sell your work in any format; a book, an e-book, audio, magazine, or even a PDF file.

If you're selling a printed book, never fear. Blurb handles all the shipping, so you don’t have to post anything yourself. Plus, there’s a helpful online community where you can ask any questions you may have or just join in the general writer-ly banter. If you have your own website, you can use Blurb as another sales channel. If you like, you can even embed the book you're selling on Blurb on your website to try and encourage sales.

But what about the money? At the end of each month, Blurb pays you any money you’ve made, either by PayPal or check. However, you need to reach their minimum payment threshold of $25 (USD) in profits; it’s the same in Canadian dollars and £12.50 if you’re in the UK.

So, that’s the practical stuff out the way. How do you print your book with Blurb?

It’s simple.

Blurb provides a selection of templates to choose from. Once you've picked the one that best suits the genre of your book, uploads your text. They offer templates to complement an array f industries, including travel, cookery, photography, and memoir-style books, amongst others. Obviously, there’s room for the novelist too!

There’s plenty of software attached to Blurb, such as their Adobe InDesign plugin, which allows you to create blank templates for your book.

But what about selling your book?

Write something catchy; you want to make yourself sound interesting. But, don’t write reams and reams– save that for the book! Look at other author profiles and what’s working and what isn’t.

The same applies when you’re writing an enticing description of your book. As with all things, remember the end reader. What do you think they’ll want to know about your book? What would compel them to buy, a cliffhanger ending? Twists and turns? An emotional connection with the characters? Honesty? Whatever your book covers, tell your audience. It’s your one chance to do a short and snappy sales pitch. Remember, people have short attention spans, so keep it concise.

Next, set the price of your book. You do this under the Sell & Distribute tab. Remember to set the profit you want to make. Otherwise, you’ll be selling at cost!

Last but not least, get promoting! Embed the listing onto your blog and your Facebook/Instagram pages. We also encourage you to share a short extract of your work and/or write a review of your book. This works wonders for pushing sales. Don’t sit back and expect people to find it. Create some chatter.

If you'd prefer to sell your book on Amazon, you can still prepare your book on Blurb, just include its ISBN and it’ll be ready for Amazon self-publishing.

On Amazon, you'll get an author profile. This lists anything else you’ve written (and any other products you're selling). It also includes a section that links to your blog posts. Plus, each of your books gets its own product page. Not bad!

Once you have your author profile up and running and you've created a listing for your book, set your list price. This is the total amount it costs to make your book, what profit you’ve set, and how much Amazon takes in fees. Remember to take all these figures into account; otherwise, you’ll make a big fat zero.

Amazon charges a distribution fee. You’ll pay, at the time of writing, $1.35 for each sale you make and a mark up of $1.15 on the list price. On Amazon, there’s a 30-day return window when customers can ask for a refund/return. Once this period is over, Amazon will report the sale, process payment, and send the funds within 15-45 days. The payment threshold is $25.

Marketing Your Self Published Book

To sell books online, you have to make them attractive.

Especially if you don’t have a publisher pushing you on from the sidelines.

So, design a beautiful cover. Something that catches the eye and reflects the content. Your book cover has to get a second glance, otherwise, it’s all over. There are plenty of templates you can use to help get you going, check out Canva to see what they have on offer. Alternatively, invest in the services of a good designer.

You need an eye-catching and intriguing book title and subtitle. Look at successful books in the genre you’re competing in. What makes them catchy? You’re an unknown author, so you can’t rely on readers going by your name. So, take some time crafting a short and enticing title for your book. That, along with the cover, will massively help make those all-important sales. Maybe brainstorm some ideas with trusted friends/readers? After all, two heads are better than one!

Next up, you need to generate positive reviews. We all read reviews, so needless to say if your book hasn't got any, who’s going to buy it? So, encourage readers to publish their thoughts once they've finished. Ask friends or family who have read the book and loved it to leave you a favorable review. Every little helps!

If you’re selling on Amazon, know this: their algorithm is strongly linked to reviews and sales. So, the more you sell, and the better reviewed you are, the higher up Amazon ranks you. Simple, right?

That’s why it’s so important that within the first few weeks of selling your book on Amazon or Blurb, you work hard to generate some noise about it. Ask Amazon’s top reviewers to review your book. Tell them why they should. If you're selling an ebook, invite readers at the end to review it via a link.

Last but certainly not least, you need a fantastic description of your book. Yes, the title and subtitle are essential, but a short paragraph about the book that gives nothing away but draws the reader in is critical. Amazon actually offers a free book description generator tool. Don’t assume you can do better. They’re trying to help you. You’re making them and yourself money don’t forget.

Also, make total use of the author page. Make your author description stand out. Treat it like a dating profile, only for readers. Don’t be sleazy or creepy, but imagine who’s reading it. If it helps, get a friend who works in sales or marketing to help you.

As part of your author description and book description, do some research about how to use keywords. Use Google’s keyword planner or Publisher Rocket t help you with that.

Selling Second Hand Books

You’ve amassed a ton of used books that you want to sell online. Either they're yours, and you want to shift them to free up some space, or you’re a professional buyer who acquires books from secondhand stores, garage sales, Freecycle, BookCrossing, etc., and sells them on for a profit.

Amazon and Bookscouter are two popular and successful online stores, packed with sellers.

We’re going to assume you've already gathered your stock and as such, made a significant financial outlay. This means, you just have to have a business plan, and a catchy and cool name for your bookstore to get selling online.

You also need to ensure you're fully aware of all the legal requirements of starting an online business — for example, getting a Federal Tax ID number and registering your businesses name. There's also the more techy side you'll need to swot up on, i.e., buying a website domain name if you don’t already have one and purchasing web hosting. Sometimes web hosting services come with a free domain name, but not always.

Register as a seller with your chosen sales platform. It’s pretty simple to do this. For example, with Amazon, you’ll need to create a seller account, register the books you’re selling and decide whether or not you want Amazon to fulfill the sales on your behalf, and so on. If you're registering with Amazon as a professional seller, it will cost a monthly fee.

At the time of writing, this is $39.99 a month, so you need to build this into your costs. If you set up as an individual seller, it's way cheaper, as this option costs around $0.99 a month. But, this is only suitable for someone shifting lower stock levels, e.g., less than 40 books a month. You’ll also need to register your bank details. Amazon will talk you through how to list the books you’re selling.

Listing the price is trickier, only because you need to compete with other sellers and you don’t want to price yourself out. Decide how much you want for the book. If it’s a popular, mainstream title that’s already sold by lots of other sellers, you’ll get less for it. Check out how much it’s going for with other sellers. If you’re a newbie, set your prices lower at first. But, if the book is in mint condition, say so, and ask for more. You can always alter the costs later if you're not getting the conversions you want.

Choose your shipping method. If you plan on using Amazon’s fulfillment service, then this won’t apply, but if you do, typically the charge is $3.99. Now all that's left is to ship the book. Remember to specify how long shipping will take!

Amazon will reimburse sellers the shipping fee of $3.99, but if you’re selling a more significant kind of book, say, a hardback, it’ll cost you more, and you may lose money if you don't factor this in.

Are You Interested in Getting Amazon to do the Work?

If you're nodding your head, you’ll have to ship your stock to one of their fulfillment centers. Amazon will produce shipping labels and provide you with discounted shipping.

Alternatively, you can send the stock yourself, use a cheaper local carrier, or rent a man with a van — whatever, works best for you!

Getting Amazon to fulfill your orders, is really only for people shifting large amounts of books and aren’t interested in focusing on their own website and business brand. It will inevitably cost you more, but it has its advantages if, for example, you own more than one kind of online store.

Bookscouter is a slightly different proposition. It’s popular with students who want to sell their textbooks. If you have books to sell, input the book’s specific ISBN into the site, and Bookscouter will search around 40 buyback sites and tell you which one will give you the most for it!

The easiest way to use Bookscouter is to download the app, scan the barcode ISBN, and you’re away!

Ready to Start Selling Books Online?

So now we’ve covered all the possible options, you’re good to go. Good luck making money!

Have you got any experience selling books online? If so, we would love to hear whether you were successful with this venture in the comments box below!

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/how-to-sell-books-online/feed0Shopify Chat Review for 2019: A Brilliant Chatting Tool That Boosts Your Store’s Saleshttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/shopify-chat-review
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/shopify-chat-review#respondFri, 06 Sep 2019 11:05:11 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=32103What a better way to engage your customers and prospective target audience than using the most prolific conversational tools. With the new shift in ecommerce markets, more focus is now leaning towards viable customer support. The Shopify Chat app is,…

]]>What a better way to engage your customers and prospective target audience than using the most prolific conversational tools. With the new shift in ecommerce markets, more focus is now leaning towards viable customer support. The Shopify Chat app is, without doubt, swinging in action to make this happen.

Fact is, the client is your only resort to make a loud and sensible markup on each product in your online store. In a gratifying way, Shopify’s app marketplace is, at the moment, making impeccable strides towards the optimization of your store’s performance.

As a merchant, the biggest worry is to convert your website’s traffic into serious revenue. As is the case with any other investment, making a decent ROI unquestionably comes a long way.

But the truth of the matter is, technology has changed the manner how we handle business. Shopify, for instance, is trying to change the old era of brick and mortar stores. With just a few bucks, internet and a computer, you can elevate your niche store to tremendous heights. The e-commerce model is now taking center stage, irresistibly.

On the face of it, it seems like a daunting task for a newbie. The opposite is actually true.

But here’s the catch.

You need the right tools to work with. And this review attempts to give flawless focus on the same. Choosing an instantaneous and responsive messaging channel is pretty much inevitable if you want to make your customers happy.

Let’s face it.

Chances are, you’ll experience overwhelmingly high bounce rates and so many cart abandonment issues if you don’t optimize your customer support techniques. With physical stores, customers need to contemplate on their own, how to seek for assistance. Maybe make a call or write a lengthy email. Considering the new trends, that totally sucks!

Shopify faces out this constraint in an oversimplified manner. Shopify Chat lets in an unprecedented sphere of convenience by creating a far-reaching customer engagement framework in real-time.

At the present moment, you can’t overlook the Live Chat’s predominance as a marketing automation tool. If you do, the aftermath could be highly unpleasant and draining, businesswise. And my grounds are pretty straightforward.

If you’re a merchant surfing around a fairly saturated niche, the deal-breaker is, you’ll lose so many good customers to your thirsty competitors. Why? Because your customer support system is a bit sluggish and not skillful in any way.

Besides answering your customers’ questions almost immediately, it’s so imperative to make multitasking part of the game plan. What do I mean? Well, this is no quantum physics nor rocket engineering. It’s as easy as chatting with your customers while they’re checking out other products in your store.

The above is a plus for retailers too. Not only is it a good remedy for abandoned cart recovery, but also a cost-efficient strategy to sort your customers’ conversations. If you don’t want to spend much on phone support, then don’t look back.

In this piece, we’ll have a look at the right apps to connect your store with besides Shopify's very own chatting tool. Your potential customers don’t necessarily need to email you so as to make some simple product description inquiries. There’s more to more sales than just doing the ordinary minimum.

So let’s start off and later have a look at the Shopify's live chat alternatives to use in your store.

Shopify Chat Review: Brief Overview

Technically this is a Shopify owned tool (read our Shopify review) and it's available on its marketplace for free. Assuming that you're not new to dropshipping, I bet you know this by now. If you are a brand owner, no matter the plan you’re using (Basic, Advanced, whichever the case), this app gives you a real-time solution to communicate with your customers.

Its ease of use is quite remarkable. Basically, you won’t need any pro skills to get everything up and running on your store. I gave it a through run and I didn’t seem to find its setup procedure to be complex.

So what exactly does this live chat tool bring on board?

Probably, you should think of this app as a multifaceted extension which does more than just building a good relationship with you and your customers. It helps new visitors contact the merchant in the most effortless way. You don’t want to lose valuable clients a result of a blurry communication channel.

Shopify Live Chat Review: Shopify Ping

Shopify Chat does the brainy work to put your store on the right track by linking it to Shopify Ping (read our Shopify Ping review). Maybe you’ve never heard of the Ping. Don’t sweat it though. I’m about to brief you with what it does and how to utilize its functionalities to boost the chances of shaping up your prospects with already engaged, and future shoppers in the most fruitful way.

To revamp your customers’ shopping experience, you need to give exhaustive answers to all the questions raised by your customers. So where does the Ping come in?

Like any other app, it’s for the most part, built to resolve a problem. In this context, making a conversational relationship with your customers. It goes beyond the threshold by letting the merchant share their store’s products and make direct sales without customers having to leave the chat.

What about the checkout options?

That’s already sorted out. No brainer at all. Well, at the moment, customers can now use the Apple Pay app to pay for the purchased items. This is pretty feasible since the Ping is a free iOS app. Soon enough the app will be available on Android devices so as to even out the gap.

Based on its mode of operation, Shopify Live Chat tends to be a winning online sales channel just like the trendsetting ones; Instagram, Facebook, and the likes. At the same time, it brings out the social setting you’d expect from one of the mainstream counterparts.

In just a few clicks, the merchants can send promo codes to their respective customer base and make tremendous sales like never before. Once you integrate your Shopify’s live chat app with Ping, you can easily, or if you like, successfully, do these extras;

You can add and make adjustments to the Live Chat button on your Shopify’s online store.

Give your customers good feedback in real-time by responding to all queries via the Ping.

Track down all the completed sales using the sales channel dashboard and the Analytics pages as well.

And what are the prerequisites?

So simple. You only need to have an online store in place. In regard to Shopify Ping, you need an iOS device to view all the updates and respond to questions quite fast. As simple as it sounds.

The downside, however, is that Android users have been left out. Nevertheless, I'm certain that Shopify will look into this slowdown and give it an in-depth consideration before the evident outcry goes a little overboard.

This is confusingly similar to Shopify Ping. The truth of the matter is, the two are intertwined to give you the most attainable results. In the most elementary terms, the Kit is more of your virtual assistant.

Simply stated, the Kit is owned by Ping. So here’s what it does. It helps you run email campaigns, Facebook ads, do retarget campaigns, monitor your shoppable posts, and much more, from a single point. Surprisingly, the Kit has powerful integrations which are built to be assertive. It’s so dynamic in the sense that, it links to other Shopify apps.

This symbiotic relationship between your tools certainly gears up to optimize your marketing strategies. It has an in-built business assistant which automatically pushes notifications to answer frequently asked questions.

Shopify Live Chat Review: So what are the alternatives?

Tidio is primarily a live chat solution built to streamline communications between customers and merchants without leaving the site. With this productive app, you can promptly reply to your customers’ queries in seconds. The most pleasing fact about Tidio is that it’s a free tool yet has premium-like features.

If the free basic plan isn’t exhaustive and at par with your needs, you can upgrade to the paid Communicator plan.

Tidio’s Communicator Plan

For only $15 per month, you get elevating and gladdening features which help you get the best out of your e-commerce store. So what makes it achieve bigger strides than the free plan?

The major perk with the paid plan is that you get to see all new visitors who are already typing a message, in real-time. This is kind of proficiency is so rewarding, considering how fulfilling it's to reply to your customers as soon as the notification hits your chatbox.

But that’s not the end of it.

The Live Visitor list also shows which country each potential customer comes from. Just in case you don’t know how to utilize this kind of distinctive information, here’s the deal. This lets the merchant work with accurate demographics. This option tirelessly works in the same fashion as the popular Google Analytics to show you where most of your website’s traffic is coming from.

What’s the end result?

You make data-driven decisions while budgeting for campaigns to make outstanding conversions from your target audience. In other words, you’ll know exactly which locations to put more focus on while tweaking your campaign options.

This last option triumphs quite strikingly. Tidio allows you to see all the viewed pages alongside the number of visits and the specific date, accordingly. Take your product pages, for instance. You can discern between those which spark more attention and the pages which get the least of it.

Lastly, Tidio allows 3 administrators to log in simultaneously on this plan. If you need to add a fourth operator, you just need to part with €10.

Tidio’s Chatbots Package

This plan is specially designed to boot up your conversions. It’s mostly CRM (Customer Relationship Management) oriented to hype up your store’s interaction with the already existing, and potential customers, both in equal measure. You must know that building leads and managing sales only need well-structured tools which analyze your customers’ historical data.

This lets you hang on the most accurate forecasts, and sharpens the predictability of your visitors’ shopping habits. You need to take an edge on the leads. Such signals are good odds worth so much attention. Tidio, not only integrates with Shopify, but with a couple of other CRMs like HubSpot, Zendesk which we'll look into in a moment, and Salesforce.

The price of this plan also goes for $15 a month. In a nutshell, it gives you access to three stunning features. First off, it has an option to help you out with cart abandonment issues. In just a click of a button, you can send messages to customers who’ve left without completing the checkout.

Second, to the above, you can automate loyalty messages to keep your returning customers in your pockets. This amazing option allows you to recalculate your steps by letting you fill your chat box with special offers to your most valuable customers. Goes without saying that this is a proven strategy to increase your sales. The best part of it all is building your customers’ trust in your products.

Just in case you’re out of reach, Tidio auto-replies all your notifications, which seems to be a cool alternative to manage your business even when you’re in the ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, for lack of a better phrase.

This package has indomitable hosting speed and capacity, I must say. It gives you space for 5000 unique visitors. For a starter, this is sort of bountiful and cuts above the bare expectations.

Just like Tidio, Zendesk is a live chat app which lets the merchant be plugged-in to clear conversations with customers. If you don't trust my words, you can give its free trial version a shot.

What makes this tool to yield better results is its user-friendliness and compatibility. It's responsive on both mobile devices and via the web. As you know, creating a personal connection with your customers boosts the likelihood of making sales which are pretty up to the mark.

Well, Zendesk helps you out with such objectives by helping you reach out to customers in real-time. Since it's practical to track your pages here, you can automate push notifications, for example, when your customers get stuck at the checkout. In an unrelenting extent, this is a rigid solution to engage your customers while they're shopping.

Zendesk goes an extra mile to give you market-driven insights which help you make well-informed decisions for your business' productivity. Its live chat analytics tool allows you to gauge your customers' satisfaction and gives you pointers on areas which you need to make adjustments on.

As a merchant who's selling on a dynamic channel such as Shopify, you typically need to work round the clock. For this reason, Zendesk allows you to reply to multiple conversations, all at the same time. What's more engrossing is its pre-chat option which lets a merchant request for the visitor's information even before they start a conversation. The offline forms, on the other hand, lets the customers reach you for assistance even when you're not available.

Since it keeps a track of all the activities happening on your site, Zendesk generates a clear-cut Visitor list which shows the total number of unique visitors and the most viewed pages. In furtherance of that, this platform uses a chat rating system. It exceedingly improves your stores perfomance by helping you collect feedback from users. In so doing, you can spot areas which you need to reconcile.

So what's the price?

Zendesk's pricing is flexible for both small businesses and those at an enterprise level. Each plan comes with a free trial. Let's check them out. The Lite plan is typically free. It comes with the earlier discussed chat rating solution and stores your entire chat history for a period of 30 days.

The Team plan goes for $14 per user, per month. This lets you customize your widgets and send 2 target-oriented triggers to your customer base. The package connects to public apps and gives you an unlimited space to store all your chats. Zendesk has a Professional plan which costs $29, just in case you feel like 2 triggers aren't enough. It doesn't limit the merchant on the number of triggers and has a conversion tracking option.

Unlike the preceding plan, this particular package hooks you up to private apps and creates well-analyzed reports from your chats' history. Lastly, the most premium of them all is the Enterprise plan. You need to part with $59 per agent, per month so at to utilize its salient features. It gives you access to a real-time monitoring dashboard and a 24/7 live chat support.

Shopify Live Chat Review: Final Say

Judging by the manner how this tool operates, it could be the only chatting app you need to engage with your customers at a personal level. If you need to heighten your sales, your relationship with your site's visitors ought to prevail. Considering everything, Shopify's live chat seems like a relatively competent tool to help you out with such tasks.

Alternatively, the likes of Tidio, Zendesk, and Live Chat can equally give you up to standard perfomance while interacting with your customers.

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/shopify-chat-review/feed0Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt Comparison: An Ecommerce Marketing Battlehttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/klaviyo-vs-conversio-vs-jilt
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/klaviyo-vs-conversio-vs-jilt#respondWed, 04 Sep 2019 12:08:16 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=31977Ecommerce marketing is becoming more and more automated every year. From welcome emails to sales funnels and ad networks, all ecommerce stores should be using some sort of automated marketing tool to ensure a consistent flow of sales and exposure.…

]]>Ecommerce marketing is becoming more and more automated every year. From welcome emails to sales funnels and ad networks, all ecommerce stores should be using some sort of automated marketing tool to ensure a consistent flow of sales and exposure. But which ecommerce marketing software is right for you? Today we'd like to compare Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt to see which of these popular options will work best for your online store.

The Basics: Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt

Klaviyo, Conversio, and Jilt are all marketing tools for ecommerce businesses and other companies that may run as physical retail stores. All of them are similar enough that it's worth comparing them to understand elements like pricing, features, and integrations.

I've used all three of these tools in the past and know that they each provide automated emails, quality email builders, and some interesting upselling tools like related product modules and coupons.

On the surface, Klaviyo appears to have a larger feature-set than the competition, along with more integrations. Conversio makes a splash with the best interface and some beautiful email designs for bringing back customers. Jilt is somewhere in the middle and it boasts some excellent pricing for all businesses.

But what about popularity?

When taking a look at Google Trends we can see the interest in each search term over time. Keep in mind that a search of “Conversio” might not be intended for the marketing software–so, this isn't perfect but it gives us a general idea of searches.

Klaviyo's search popularity has steadily increased over the past 12 months. Both Conversio and Jilt are battling it out with lower search results but still steady traffic.

A search on BuiltWith reveals some even more interesting information.

For instance, Klaviyo is currently running on over 57,000 websites according to BuiltWith.com. This website isn't going to be exactly accurate, but again, it gives us a great idea about market share and which of the tools are most popular right now.

Jilt is live on 5,400 websites, and Conversio can be found on just over 5,700. So, they're all being used by many people, but Klaviyo is clearly dominating when it comes to market share.

However, that doesn't mean that Klaviyo is the only way to go. Jilt is ranked as one of the top five most popular cart abandonment tools in the US. Klaviyo doesn't get close to this ranking.

So, it's essential to first understand the type of marketing tools you want. We also want to make sure that companies aren't choosing software based solely on popularity. Therefore, we'll dive deep into some of the intricacies of each software, including pricing and the unique features.

The Pricing: Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt

As we'll learn in the Features section, all three of these marketing tools are fairly similar. However, some of them have unique features or better interfaces in certain areas of the dashboard. So, just keep in mind that pricing for tools like these often takes advanced features into account. Other times, we might find that the lowest priced options have far fewer features.

That said, pricing is an extremely important part of choosing a marketing software, so we'll break down what the rates look like then turn to the features to see if that pricing makes sense.

Let's begin:

Klaviyo Pricing

A great part about Klaviyo is that it includes all of its features into every pricing plan. The monthly pricing increases only when you add to your contact book. It's also nice that Klaviyo offers a free plan for small businesses and companies interested in testing out the service.

Because of the rates being focused only on contact numbers, the Klaviyo pricing is fairly easy to understand:

Free – For up to 250 contacts. You also have a maximum of 500 email sends, along with required Klaviyo branding and a double opt-in.

$20 per month – For up to 500 contacts. Unlimited emails are included, along with the removal of Klaviyo branding. You also receive email and chat support.

$30 per month – For up to 1,000 contacts.

$45 per month – For up to 1,500 contacts.

$60 per month – For up to 2,000 contacts.

As you can see, the pricing from Klaviyo is extremely flexible. We haven't even gone past 2,000 contacts and they already offer five plans for you to choose from. This means you won't end up spending too much money than you need, and you always have access to all of the features.

The highest listed pricing plan is at $1,700 per month for up to 147,000 contacts. You also gain access to a dedicated customer success manager. After that threshold, you must contact the Klaviyo sales team to customize more of an enterprise plan.

Conversio Pricing

The Conversio pricing has been consistently reasonable. Not only can your company test out a free trial, but all of the Conversio features are packaged into each of the plans.

The pricing increases as you add more contacts to your store. There's no free plan, but the free trial is a nice start.

$20 per month for up to 500 contacts.

$40 per month for up to 1,000 contacts.

$70 per month for up to 2,500 contacts.

$90 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.

$140 per month for up to 10,000 contacts.

Similar to Klaviyo, Conversio has many pricing plans, all of which rely on the number of contacts you have. We won't go through all of them, but you can select your contact number here and see what your costs would be.

As for the highest listed pricing plan, you can get support for up to 250,000 contacts for $850 per month.

It's also worth mentioning that Conversio lets you pay for a year in advance to get two months for free.

Jilt Pricing

Finally, Jilt provides a wide range of pricing plans with all of its features regardless of how much you pay. As with the competition, Jilt only requires a higher payment as you build your contact list.

Not only can companies try out Jilt for 14 days without payment, but a free plan is provided for a lifetime. We'll cover some plans below, but the actual pricing calculator can be found here.

Free – For up to 300 contacts.

$29 per month – For up to 1,000 contacts.

$49 per month – For up to 2,500 contacts.

As mentioned, dozens of plans are offered depending on your contact count. For instance, the next step up would be $79 per month. As you can see, there's plenty of flexibility for companies that shouldn't be spending too much on features they may not need. Instead, everyone gets the same features and it all depends on how big your company is.

The highest plan on the Jilt website is $1,029 per month for up to 150,000 contacts. After that, you must call the Jilt sales team to figure out a plan for your store.

🥇The Winner?

It appears that Conversio is slightly more expensive than the others across the board.

Jilt is definitely the winner for smaller businesses since you receive that Free plan and up to 1,000 contacts for $29 per month.

That said, some of the bigger plans are far more affordable for Conversio, making it our favorite for larger businesses–at least in terms of pricing.

The Features: Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt

Scanning through the features may make one think that all three of these tools are pretty similar. That's slightly true, but there are some unique items that should be shown off to help make your decision. Let's start with a comparison of the lists and then decide on which software offers the most bang for your buck. Or maybe you don't need all of those features and could save money with another software?

Let's find out:

Klaviyo Features

Klaviyo breaks down its features into three functions: Listen, Analyze, and Act. This allows for a full suite of marketing tools from segmentation options to reporting, and social advertising to email campaigns.

Klaviyo explains that it attempts to provide enterprise marketing software for all types of stores, even if you're running a startup.

👉 Below is a list of some of our favorite features:

Powerful integrations for the most popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.

Deep segmentation for targeted groups like left-handed females or people who just bought a house in Georgia. Klaviyo explains that these examples are extreme but definitely possible.

Website tracking to see what your customers are doing, giving you the ability to target certain customers. For instance, you might target frequent visitors who rarely buy.

Specific personalization beyond the customer's first name. This includes items like cart details, product suggestions, and custom web feeds.

Automation in the form of Facebook ads, email autoresponders, and messaging campaigns.

Superior reporting with information on what drove a purchase in the first place.

Contact list importing from places like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

Excellent A/B testing for all email campaigns and workflows.

Automatic workflows such as post-purchase followups, abandoned cart emails, and a welcome series.

A reliable email designer and templates to make your designs look professional.

Conversio Features

It's much easier to understand the features from Conversio than it is the competition. Conversio does a wonderful job of categorizing all of its tools into six basic groups.

Abandoned cart emails with premade campaigns to ensure that people come back to your store and complete purchases.

Newsletters for keeping in touch with your users and sending out custom content like blog posts.

Follow-up emails that automatically trigger when someone doesn't buy from your store for a certain period of time. These emails can also include coupons and other upsells.

Product reviews that you can place in your emails to show just how much people love your products and brand.

Feedback modules for retrieving information about how your customers are responding to your services and products.

Pre-built automatic workflows that can be turned on with a single click and customized to fit your brand.

An incredible email builder with easy-to-use modules and clean templates.

Segmentation tools for sending out the appropriate emails to the right customers. For instance, you might automatically send out new female clothing styles to all of your female customers–but skip the men.

Choices for rewarding your most loyal customers.

Product reviews with customer upload buttons. This means that your customers can upload pictures of the products to be displayed on your website and emails.

Trustworthy integrations with popular tools like OptinMonster, Wheeli, and Privy.

Jilt Features

Jilt has an exciting set of features with everything from sales announcements to performance tracking.

👉 Here's what you have to look forward to:

Promotional emails and newsletters with customization tools for products, photos, and customer data.

A drag and drop editor, making it easy to add content modules and send out the emails.

Unique sales announcements that get triggered when a certain group of customers does something. For instance, you might send out a sale email when people have reached a specific number of orders (aka rewarding your VIPs).

Product news emails for when you need to send out a targetted email for things like updated items and new products.

High-level segmentation so that only the people who want to see certain emails get them. For instance, one customer may only want newsletters while another wants to hear about sales and new products.

Performance tracking with analytics for unsubscribes, opens, and clicks.

Abandoned cart recovery tools that contact your customers after they have left something in the cart. You can also include coupons and other information in the emails.

Post-purchase follow-ups with recommended products, or something more unique like product information or return policies.

Automated new customer emails with information about your products.

A unique automated email called “replenishment messages,” which remind customers that they might be running low on a certain product.

Win-back campaigns with emails to entice old customers back to your store.

Transactional emails such as receipts, shipping confirmations, and refunds.

🥇The Winner?

It's tough to choose based on all features, since each one has some unique elements that might help out distinctive companies.

I personally feel that Jilt has the most comprehensive list of features, along with some unique options like the replenishment messages.

That said, Klaviyo is a full suite of tools, and Conversio has the easiest, cleanest interface–making it a favorite for small to mid-sized stores.

Email Marketing: Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt

Much of the reason companies decide to go with Klaviyo, Conversio, or Jilt is because of the superior email marketing. The goal is to automate most of the email marketing with workflows. For example, you can send out a welcome email to new customers and even opt for emails to go out for receipts, reminders, and birthdays.

At the core of each email marketing module is the designer. So, we want to ensure that the design process is easy, while also offering automation tools for a more efficient workflow.

Klaviyo Email Marketing

Klaviyo is known for its deep personalization with its email marketing campaigns. It works by automating much of the traditional email newsletters you may be used to. For instance, Klaviyo sends out customized sale announcements, targeted campaigns, and newsletters with the help of your own curated content.

Lists and segments can be created to ensure that the right customers are receiving proper notifications. Targeting is the goal, which means you can form groups of people and automatically send them the emails that are most relevant to them.

Klaviyo also has a branding wizard that pulls the colors and logo from your website so that all of your emails and other messages look accurate. The drag and drop editor is there for you to customize any module, and you can always tap into the HTML editor for more advanced edits.

The designer is clean and simple enough for a beginner to understand, but it also boasts the power and multiple modules for running an efficient large online store.

Other than that, we enjoy the A/B testing from Klaviyo, since you can question anything from send times to button placement.

Conversio Email Marketing

For email marketing, Conversio links directly to your online store and provides one of the cleanest, most manageable email marketing tools you can find. Most of it is based on automation for when you need to send out a receipt or feedback email.

Brand your emails with a logo and colors, and work with the drag and drop editor to insert certain personalization tags like customer orders and names.

Overall, I would argue this is the most intuitive of all the designers we're reviewing today, and it only makes things better that the modules are so easy to understand and implement. For instance, you can quickly insert modules for feedback, newsletters, abandoned cart info, and receipt details.

Jilt Email Marketing

Jilt provides everything from automated email to newsletters, and abandoned cart recovery to transactional messages. The email editor has drag and drop functionality, and you can choose from a wide range of templates.

We also like the fact that Jilt lets you add product recommendations and dynamic coupon codes to any email. Pair that with the rather unique replenishment emails and you have a nice email platform for automatically connecting in more unusual ways.

🥇The Winner?

Based on the interface, I would argue that Conversio comes out with a big win here.

However, if you want the most features, consider either Klaviyo or Jilt for your email design.

Integrations: Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt

Each of the marketing tools we're talking about has its own set of integrations. Some of them focus more on joining with ecommerce platforms, while others are exceptional for combining with rewards programs or form software.

Klaviyo Integrations

The Klaviyo integrations extend from CRM platforms to rewards programs.

You can check out all of the integrations here and sift through the different categories like:

CRMs

Helpdesk software

Email list tools

Marketing tools

Ecommerce platforms

Payment software

Rewards

Other

Some of the most popular (and useful) Klaviyo integrations include the following:

This is a huge collection of integrations that should not be understated. It appears that all of the major ecommerce platforms are supported, and you can take advantage of many other business tools without having to worry about integrating them yourself. You can also access the Klaviyo API to integrate just about any software you want.

Conversio Integrations

Conversio definitely doesn't have as many integrations as the competition, but it does focus on some of the absolute essentials. For instance, you can utilize Conversio if you have any of the following ecommerce platforms:

The ecommerce platform integrations are the big dogs that many people are running their sites through. In addition, you can take advantage of integrations for popups, loyalty programs, and sweepstakes. That said, it's still a smaller library of integrations that can't compete with Klaviyo.

Jilt Integrations

Jilt has some solid ecommerce platform integrations, but it falls short outside of that. In fact, we would put Jilt in third place in this category.

Although there are options for integrating with outside tools, there's not much information on how to do this on the Jilt website.

👉 Having said that, here are the ecommerce platforms that work with Jilt:

🥇The Winner?

Klaviyo is the clear winner in the integration arena. Not only does it have dozens of ecommerce platform and outside software integrations, but all of them are nicely organized into a library with filters. Conversio is a distant second in terms of quantity, but the company does seem to focus on what you actually need the most. Jilt has some nice ecommerce platform integrations, but that's about it.

Which Ecommerce Marketing Automation Tool is Right for You?

When comparing Klaviyo vs Conversio vs Jilt, it becomes clear that each has its own advantages.

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/email-marketing-services-reviews/klaviyo-vs-conversio-vs-jilt/feed0Litch.app Review: The New Kid on the Blockhttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/litch-app-review
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/litch-app-review#respondTue, 03 Sep 2019 09:19:05 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=30713If you're on the hunt for something to help you create a beautiful and professional-looking payment page, then Litch.app may be the solution for you. It doesn't matter what you're selling. From physical merchandise to information products to subscriptions, Litch.app…

]]>If you're on the hunt for something to help you create a beautiful and professional-looking payment page, then Litch.app may be the solution for you. It doesn't matter what you're selling. From physical merchandise to information products to subscriptions, Litch.app handles it all.

This program has only just recently launched, so you might not have heard of them yet. If that's you, never fear, you're in the right place because we're going to explore everything you need to know about Litch.app here in the article.

Let's dive in!

How Does Litch.app Work?

As we've just said, you can create stunning payment pages that seamlessly integrate with your Stripe account.

The founders of Litch.app decided another payment page service was necessary, and can you blame them? After all, the majority of Litch's competitors are okay…but they could definitely benefit from a boost in flexibility. More often than not, it's harder than it should be to customize sales pages to look precisely how you want them.

So, the team at Litch.app made it their mission to provide users with a richer page editor that allows them to add:

You can get your sales pages up and running in no time and receive payment for any service or product. All without writing a single line of code — how neat is that?

Litch.app Pricing

There aren't any upfront costs. Yay!

But, you'll have to pay a 3% transaction fee unless you upgrade to Litch's Pro plan. This will set you back $19 per month. With Litch's paid-for plan, you won't have to shell out for transaction fees, and Litch's branding won't be plastered all over your pages. You'll also get help managing your integrations.

Litch.app's Features

That's not all Litch.app has to offer. Customers also benefit from the use of:

Custom Domains and/or Sub-Domains

Using your own web domain works wonders for boosting trust with customers and keeping your branding consistent.

Just head over to your domain dashboard and add a CNAME record to Litch.app. From there, you can add your domain using the advanced settings. Then Litch will generate an HTTPS certificate for it. Be aware; this can take a few minutes to process, but it's worth the wait!

Email Receipts

Litch.app sends email receipts to your buyers and also pings you over notifications pertaining to your sales. That way, all parties are kept up to date every step of the way.

Run Things Your Way

Add extra HTML code to use live chat and Google analytics on your sales pages. Or, if you're a web developer, you'll probably want access to more advanced customization features. If you fall into that category, never fear, because you'll also get access to Stripe’s awesome API. So, rest assured, you can set things up and personalize your pages to your heart's content!

You can also create coupons to run promotions for your products and/or services. This is handy for increasing sales and extending your reach.

You'll be pleased to hear, Litch doesn't use the “Do you have a coupon?” button. In their experience, this actually decreases conversions.

This checks out.

How many times have you gone to pay for something online, seen there's a coupon available, and then clicked off of the checkout to search for a coupon code?

I know I have!

That's why Litch uses links to activate coupons instead.

Speaking of increased exposure, you can also share your product page with a simple link.

Sell Things Your Way

You can set product variants and offer multiple subscription plans at different price points. This makes selling recurring products easy. You'll also be pleased to hear; your customers can easily upgrade or cancel their subscriptions at any time (without you having to do a thing!).

When it comes to selling physical goods, Litch allows you to collect your customer's shipping address as well as the number of products they've ordered. Plug this info into your order fulfillment system, and you're good to go!
You can also offer customers digital files. Just upload the documents, and Litch will deliver them securely to your audience.

Not to mention, if you're a freelancer, contractor, or consultant, never fear, because you can also use these sales pages to sell and receive money for your services.

Mobile-Friendly Design

You can be confident your sales pages look fabulous on all mobile devices. Plus, you can also accept payments from customers via Apple Pay and soon Google Pay.

Around the World Selling

Litch complies with European payment regulations, i.e., it's PCI compliant and SCA ready. So, you need not worry about sorting that for yourself!

Litch makes it easy to sell to customers around the globe. But, be aware, that to create a Litch account, you'll have to operate from a country where Stripe's supported.

Ready to Start Using Litch.app?

We hope that having gone through this article, you now have a better idea of what Litch does. Have you got any experience using Litch.app? If so, we'd love to hear your thoughts, experiences, and opinions in the comments box below! Let's get the conversation flowing; we look forward to hearing from you soon!

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/litch-app-review/feed0The Best WordPress Alternatives to Consider for 2020https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-resources/wordpress-alternatives
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-resources/wordpress-alternatives#respondMon, 02 Sep 2019 09:19:12 +0000https://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=32007Do you want a WordPress alternative to help you build your online presence? It's fair to say that WordPress is one of the most popular tools on the market. 27% of the entire internet is powered by WordPress. That makes…

]]>Do you want a WordPress alternative to help you build your online presence?

It's fair to say that WordPress is one of the most popular tools on the market. 27% of the entire internet is powered by WordPress. That makes it the biggest content management tool available today. However, bigger doesn't always mean better.

While WordPress does have a lot of great features to offer, it won't be the best service for every online business. Popularity is great, but no content management solution is perfect, and that applies to WordPress too. If you've tried WP for yourself and decided that you need something different to make your website stand out, then you've come to the right place.

Although we're huge fans of the free WordPress experience ourselves, we know that people need variety.

That's why we've pulled together some of the top-performing WordPress alternatives on the market for you today.

Read on to find out more.

Benchmark: The Pros and Cons of WordPress

Before you can make an informed decision about the right WordPress alternative, you'll need to start with an in-depth understanding of what this CMS can do.

WordPress is the world's most popular site-building service, intended to help you create websites that not only look amazing but support your marketing efforts with things like better SEO, stronger marketing campaigns and excellent back-end design.

Starting life as a simple blogging platform in 2003, WordPress has come a long way over the years. Today, you can build virtually any kind of website with WordPress. What's more, because there's such a wide range of plugins and add-ons to choose from in the WordPress ecosystem, you can add any functionality that the solution doesn't already offer. There are plugins for everything from CRM, to email marketing, and SEO too.

👍 Pros:

WordPress is entirely free to use: All you need to pay for is your hosting for your website, and any premium plugins or features that you want to add. The service itself is available free-of-charge, for complete control over your site.

WordPress gives you access to a vast collection of add-ons, extensions, and plugins to extend the functionality and performance of your website.

WordPress is incredibly easy to customize, with plenty of website template designs to choose from. Each template also comes with customization options to help you create an entirely unique experience for your visitors.

Because of its' popularity, WordPress already has in-depth integrations with many of the crucial third-party tools that businesses use, including email marketing software, SEO, lead generation tools, and payment gateways.

WordPress offers complete control over your website, so you can keep it as simple as you like and add integrations and tools as the service grows.

WordPress is incredibly easy to use. From day one, the developers wanted to make sure that anyone could use their service without any frustration or learning curve.

👎 Cons:

You're responsible for the security of your website, creating backups, installing updates, and making sure that everything runs smoothly on the back-end. This can be a lot to handle for some companies.

WordPress doesn't come with a drag-and-drop website builder built-in. This means that it takes some time for beginners to get to grips with their WP tools if they're using them for design. However, you can use alternative integrations.

You don't need to learn any code to use WordPress, but it's helpful to have a basic knowledge of CSS and HTML to make your life a little easier.

If you want to make a professional online business without spending a lot of money, WordPress is a good choice. However, you'll have to spend some time learning the basics. Additionally, it's worth noting that you're going to be in complete control of your site, which means that you're responsible for keeping it running in peak condition.

Although WordPress is excellent for managing and controlling your online presence, it's not the best for actually building your initial website. That's something that you're going to need some extra help with – or at least spare time for training. On the other hand, Shopify provides one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use store builders on the market.

With around 800,000 users worldwide, Shopify must be doing something right. This company provides access to state-of-the-art responsive designs intended to make your store look incredible on any platform or device. Additionally, Shopify is popular enough that you can turn to the company's community for help and guidance if you need it.

Shopify is packed full of useful features to explore, including the option to manage product variants, check out your taxes, upgrade your shipping, and even expand the capabilities of Shopify via the app store. Although it's an excellent solution, Shopify also has some drawbacks to think about too. For instance, it's not great for working with multiple currencies at once, and if you use Shopify Payments as your main payment processor, you'll need to pay a transaction fee.

Best For: Shopify is an excellent tool for companies in search of an easy way to build eCommerce websites for selling to their customers. It's not necessarily designed for the creative company that wants to produce a lot of blogs, or curate content.

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Shopify review.

BigCommerce is an Australian store-building tool that's also an excellent alternative to WordPress if you're looking to create an ecommerce site. This option is particularly good for businesses that want to sell to people in different countries, as the multi-currency features are second-to-none, and a lot smoother than what you get with Shopify.

A great thing about BigCommerce is that it won't charge you transaction fees for the sales that you process either. That's a massive benefit for anyone who can't afford to waste extra cash on their campaigns. Saying that BigCommerce does come with a yearly threshold that will force you to upgrade your plan to something more expensive if you make too many sales in a short space of time. You'll need to check out all of their plans and prices to learn more.

If you do decide to pick BigCommerce over WordPress, keep in mind that there are some pitfalls to consider. For instance, it's hard to create multi-lingual stores, even if accepting payments in separate currencies is easy peasy. This means that you're going to need to get some help from premium templates and external applications. What's more, there aren't as many modern designs as you would get with Shopify or Weebly when it comes to templates.

👍 Pros:

Easy to sell products in different currencies

You can sell products outside of your store in other marketplaces

No transaction fees required (until you're selling large quantities)

99.999% uptime guarantee for peace of mind

Option to add shipping quotes with real-time rates from FedEx, UPS, and more

👎 Cons:

Limited free themes and premium themes are expenses

Editor isn't as advanced as Shopify or WordPress

Blogging platform isn't as good as WordPress

Pricing plans are more expensive

Blogging options not ideal

Best for: BigCommerce is excellent for selling products in multiple currencies around the world, although you'll need to get some extra help dealing with things like language translation. It's also great if you don't want any transaction fees to worry about.

Squarespace is one of the most popular WordPress alternatives for creative users. The reason is that this luxury service comes with plenty of designs to choose from when you're building your templates, and those designs are very immersive, stylish, and responsive. They're great for really making your content stand out online.

One useful thing about Squarespace is that it makes it easier to transition from other services. You can import your blog with all of its posts from WordPress into the Squarespace environment with a couple of clicks. However, it's not necessarily a good idea to stick with Squarespace for blogging purposes, unless you don't mind compromising on SEO.

Meta descriptions and page titles are harder to adjust on this platform than they are on WordPress. The whole Squarespace experience isn't nearly as simple as Wix, Weebly, or WordPress.

Another downside of Squarespace is that the navigation isn't particularly easy to use, and the least expensive plan is still pretty pricey. Saying that there's a great range of features to choose from for companies who want drag-and-drop content builders, and an all-in-one solution for managing their digital presence. Squarespace also offers a very fast loading time.

👍 Pros:

No need to buy a domain or hosting separately

Option to create your own designs using drag-and-drop builder

Beginner-friendly content building

Selection of beautiful responsive templates to choose from

All-in-one platform with plenty of security

Fast loading times

👎 Cons:

No mobile editor available

Not great for sites that are specifically designed for eCommerce

More expensive than most other website builders

Limited support for third-party plugins and tools

Best For Squarespace is great for creative types that don't mind splashing some extra cash on their website building tools. There are a lot of fancy-looking and stylish templates to choose from, plus you get additional speedy loading times.

Big Cartel is an easy-to-use website building solution for creative masterminds, artists, and designers that want to make their works stand out online. The platform is an all-in-one service that allows you to manage, build, and run your ecommerce store from the same simple environment. Big Cartel claims that it believes in the artist, which is something that shines through in the way that the platform operates. There aren't any sophisticated features that would be particularly hard to follow with this solution either, so it's great for beginners.

Big Cartel offers an intuitive website builder for people who want to sell unique products online. There's no need for you to have any prior website building skills to get started, which means that you can launch and build everything on your own, without worrying about having to learn new skills – unless you want to.

Although it's beneficial for some companies, Big Cartel is only intended for smaller stores, rather than huge ecommerce operations. If you're selling between 1 and 20 products, then you'll probably do well with this offering. If you're selling a lot more, then you might need something more comprehensive. The main benefit of Big Cartel is that it's simple, but that also means that some of its features are limited.

👍 Pros:

Simple and intuitive interface that's excellent for creatives

Very affordable pricing with a free forever plan

Ability to use themes or make coding changes

Excellent templates to get you started

Support for artists and creatives

👎 Cons:

Not ideal for larger stores or people in need of advanced features

Not very flexible design

No search function available

Limited payment options

Best for: Big Cartel is specially designed for creators and makers who need to make their unique works stand out online. It's great if you're looking for simplicity when you're just starting out with online sales, but not ideal for bigger companies.

WordPress is pretty impressive when it comes to providing a wide range of designs and templates that you can use to build your digital presence. However, not all of those designs will suit your needs. The main problem with WordPress's approach to themes and templates is that you need to know how to code and work with the platform if you want to customize them. Building a Wix site gives you an alternative approach. With Wix, you can drag and drop elements at the click of a mouse, dropping them wherever you need them.

All of the plans available from Wix, including the free options, come with the same drag-and-drop builder functionality. What's more, the features that you can access to make your designs shine are impressive. For instance, creating animations and videos is absolutely no problem. What's more, the builder comes with some excellent SEO functionality too. There are even specialist apps available that you can download to support a specific kind of store.

One main issue with Wix is that you can't change the template that you choose once you've selected it. Additionally, there's no way to access the source file for your themes.

👍 Pros:

User-friendly interface which is excellent for novices and beginners

Extensive app marketplace to support your extension needs

Great range of well-designed themes and templates to choose from

Post editor and dashboard are great

SEO features are built-in

👎 Cons:

Ads are everywhere in the free plan, which is very annoying

Internal URLs aren't very easy to use

Some of the templates can't be modified to your needs

Best for: Wix is a great option for creative businesses that want a wide range of design options to choose from. If you need to modify your themes, most of Wix's templates will allow for that, but you may need to check the functionality in advance.

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Wix review.

Weebly: Best for Simplicity

If you're just getting started in the digital marketing and eCommerce world for the first time, then you're going to need a solution that's easy to use. Weebly can offer that. One of the most intuitive website builders on the market, Weebly has been used to design around 40 million websites worldwide. That number might not be as big as what you'd see from WordPress, but it's still awe-inspiring.

If you want to use the Weebly free plan, then you'll have to make do with some branding on your site – but it's quite subtle. Additionally, you can design and use your own domains without any branding for a small price. The blog feature for Weebly is one of the most intuitive and flexible that we've seen too. There's the option to create various impressive layouts, and use elements ranging from contact forms and galleries to video integrations. There's also the option to implement audio and video into your pages too.

When choosing themes for your Weebly site, you'll notice that your options aren't as varied as they are with WordPress. However, there's still a reasonable selection of alternatives to choose from. What's more, the tools available for editing and updating your themes are very easy to use. This makes Weebly a great alternative to WordPress – particularly for those who need to build smaller websites for startups.

👍 Pros:

Great for beginners with limited coding experience

User-friendly backend and user interface

Plenty of templates available to choose from

Education features and onboarding tools to get you started

Fast loading speeds

👎 Cons:

Difficult to add custom content types to your pages

Hard to add advanced marketing tools to your site

You'll need to migrate manually – which is a pain

Best for: Weebly is ideally-suited to beginners who need to launch a place for their business to share and sell products online. It will give you a fantastic user experience from start to finish, with no requirement to learn extra coding.

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Weebly review.

Webflow is a handy website builder that's great for designing responsive sites. If you're looking for a WordPress alternative that still provides plenty of state-of-the-art functionality, then this is a great tool. Unlike other options in the marketplace today that focus completely on making sure that you get a simple experience when designing your site, Webflow expects that you have some basic background knowledge.

Although it's not intended to be complicated, Webflow does require a bit of prior coding experience, so you can make the most of all of the features available. It's worth noting that this tool is specially designed for people who build websites all day. That means that you probably won't be able to come in off the street and learn how to use it in a matter of minutes.

Compared to options like Wix or WordPress, WebFlow demands a lot more time and work to make the most out of your site. However, if you're willing to put the extra coding effort in, then what you end up with is a truly unique site, unlike anything you can get from a basic drag-and-drop site builder. Hosting is available from WebFlow so that you can keep all of your requirements in one place.

👍 Pros:

Excellent range of customization options for genuinely unique sites

Fantastic for dynamic content and eCommerce

Wide range of templates to get you started

High-quality features similar to WordPress

👎 Cons:

Very difficult to use compared to other tools

No live chat or phone support for help

Expensive plans compared to most options on the market

Best for: WebFlow is intended for web designers who want to build state-of-the-art websites for their clients. It doesn't need a great deal of coding knowledge, but you will have to understand the basics and learn how to make your way around the platform over time.

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Webflow review.

Volusion has been around for quite a bit longer than some of the other website building tools on the market today. Launching in 1999, the tool comes with quite a bit of heritage, and powers around 180,000 entrepreneurs. Once again, those numbers aren't as impressive as the ones you'd find on WordPress or Shopify, but they're still evidence of Volusion's success.

The great thing about Volusion is that it focuses on bringing data to the forefront of your website-building strategy. There are plenty of amazing data and analytical tools to tap into, to make sure that you're getting the most out of your marketing and sales campaigns. There's also an impressive number of payment gateways to choose from too, which means that you can sell to a broader audience.

One thing that Volusion lacks somewhat is user-friendliness. It's a little trickier than many of the other WordPress alternatives that we've looked at so far and takes some getting used to. You may need to spend a few weeks working on the platform to get a feel for it before you can start building incredible websites.

One bit of good news is that Volusion recently updated their UX solution to create a cleaner inventory system all-around. Additionally, Volusion comes with a 14-day free trial where you can test all the tools available before you commit to anything.

👍 Pros:

Excellent insights to data and analytics

Lots of high-quality payment gateways to choose from

14-day free trial to get you started

Plenty of ways to customize your online store

👎 Cons:

No method of selling digital products

No blogging features

Quite tricky to use compared to other options

Pretty expensive

Best for: Volusion is great for people who love using data and analytics in their website building strategies. However, it doesn't come with some of the basic features you might need to strengthen your digital presence, like blogging capabilities. Plus, it has quite a significant learning curve.

👉 For more details, feel free to check out our comprehensive Volusion review.

Finally, if you're the kind of person who thinks that building a website with WordPress is tough, then you're probably not going to have an easy time with Joomla. The CMS system from Joomla is an excellent alternative to WordPress, but it's not an excellent choice for those who need simplicity in their service. While WordPress is great, it can sometimes feel like a website building tool for beginners. However, Joomla is more complex and in-depth.

Although it takes longer to get used to Joomla when it comes to things like ease of use and functionality, this service is also much more secure than WordPress. Hackers will generally go for WordPress because it's the option with the most users, which makes Joomla automatically safer. Additionally, the service comes with 2-factor authentication built-in. This makes it harder for users to break into your site.

Unfortunately, the third-party integration community for Joomla isn't as advanced as it is for WordPress. However, compared to WordPress, Joomla can deliver far more advanced URLs for SEO ranking.

👍 Pros:

Joomla has several thousand free plugins available

Compared to WordPress, it's better for multi-lingual selling

Modules are more flexible and can be moved to individual pages or menus

Most of the URLs are better for SEO ranking

👎 Cons:

Community isn't as large as it is with WordPress

Plugins can be challenging to run

Interface is difficult to comprehend at first

Best for: Joomla is excellent for immersive website building with plenty of powerful tools, but it isn't the easiest software on the market. You'll need to dedicate some time to getting to know the platform before you feel entirely comfortable with it.

WordPress Alternatives: Conclusion

When it comes to building an excellent website, the right tool is crucial.

WordPress has a lot of fantastic features to offer, from excellent SEO to state-of-the-art blogging capabilities – which is what makes it such a great choice for many companies. However, it's fair to say that WordPress isn't the only option on the market, nor will it be right for everyone.

If you're looking for something with more design control, a smaller learning curve, or even better data and analytics, then one of the WordPress alternatives we've outlined above may be a better option for you.

Now it's down to you. We've given you all the information we have about some of the top-performing WordPress alternatives on the market. Our advice is to go out there and try some of the options that come with free trials yourself. That's the best way to ensure that you're getting the kind of functionality you need.

If you know of a WordPress alternative that we haven't covered here, make sure that you tell us all about it in the comment section below too.

Finding a reasonable payment gateway to use for your business is often like playing a game of golf: After much consideration, and lining up your shot, it seems clear that you've found the right route to the hole. However, a tree seems to always act as a barrier, then a friend comes up afterward and tells you that a different option may have worked better.

Have you ever found yourself in that situation? The payment gateway industry is a fickle one, so you may end up getting hit by unexpected charges, while a friend recommends a more suitable option after you've already gone through the work of setting up a payment gateway.

Our job here is to ensure that this doesn't happen at all.

We're continually looking at payment gateways and ecommerce platforms so that you make the right decision the first time.

So, we wanted to outline an interesting solution for a payment gateway for those who are looking for both mobile, in-store, and online payment collecting.

Introducing Payline Data.

Payline Data Pros and Cons:

👍 Pros:

👎 Cons:

Interchange Plus pricing model keeps pricing simple and accessible

Mobile, POS and eCommerce payment processing available

Month-to-month contract available with no cancellation fees

Receive your funds into your business bank account within 2 business days

Phone and email customer support with experts from the team

Chargeback prevention and fraud protection with Verifi

Highly accessible and user-friendly gateway interface

Placement for high-risk merchant accounts available

Support for mobile, in-person and offline payments

Specialist payment options for healthcare companies

Customer support only available Monday to Friday

Equipment must be purchased separately

Minimum monthly charge of $25 for all packages

What is Payline Data?

Payline Data is an honest, transparent, and fresh approach to payment processing for companies in search of new and flexible solutions. Created by the “Pineapple Payments” brand, Payline Data delivers unique and industry-leading tech products to organisations sick of stressful transactions.

On the website for Payline, you'll find everything you need to know about the company, without any pushy sales or marketing. For instance, you'll discover that Payline Data has a wide range of options for online and offline transactions, ideal for those in need of an omnichannel approach to running their business. The omnichannel offering supports businesses of all sizes and industries, from Fortune 500 brands to tiny startups.

Headquartered in Chicago, Payline Data focuses on developing an opportunity to access everything from intuitive insights and reports on the backend to unique booking modules, pricing and support teams, and more.

Payline Data Review: Overview

Although the company is relatively new, it's founded on top of a lot of essential values. For instance, you can rest assured that the team will do everything it can to solve the problems typically faced in the payment processing world, including inflexibility, complexity, and inaccessibility. The transparent pricing of the product combined with superior technology means that you have the freedom to invest in commerce; however, you choose.

👉 Since its launch in 2009, Payline Data has remained teetering on the cutting edge of payment processing technology, with things like:

Month-to-month flexible billing

No early termination fees or long-term contracts

Interchange-plus pricing for all merchants

Standardized and straightforward pricing packages

Free terminal equipment included with specific plans

Excellent customer support and service

What Makes Payline Data Special?

There are plenty of things to love about Payline Data, including the ability to access a wide range of different features for your transactions. However, what makes this company special is its reputation in the marketplace. Ask around among merchants, and you'll find a truly impressive range of practices for honest and transparent sales. The standardized pricing packages mean that you can stop worrying about negotiating over rates and start building a business.

With this vendor, you can choose a plan that's right for you, and start selling in no time. Another exciting thing? Payline Data gives something back to its community and the planet. The company is connected with a wide range of CSR initiatives thanks to the Payline Giving program. This means that it supports 12 causes each year, one for each month. The fact that Payline gives a portion of its profits to charity each month means that you know you're dealing with a business that cares.

Alongside their charitable giving strategies, Payline offers paid volunteering days for its workers and provides discounted pricing for merchant accounts with registered charities. You can also sign up for recurring referral payments with PayLine if you're a charitable or non-profit organization, using the Commercial Co-Venture plan.

Payline Data: How it Works

Payline Data is what merchants refer to as a “front-end” payment processing. That means that it will connect your company to credit card networks and authorize transactions on the front-end for your merchant account. There's also back-end processing available through WorldPay, which happens to be one of the largest and most reputable back-end payment processes around.

When you sign up with Payline Data, you authorize the company to process debit cards, ACH, credit card, and e-Check transactions and deliver whatever funds you earn into your bank account. Depending on the sales channels you use and the nature of your business, there's a range of ways to make sure that you're able to accept whatever transaction strategies suit you. Payline Data also offers solutions for in-store, mobile, and online payments.

One unique feature? Payline also supports transactions specifically for High-Risk companies. We'll come back to that in a minute.

Payline Data Review: Pricing

The last thing any merchant wants is a payment processor that soaks up all of their hard-earned profits. One of the best things about Payline Data is the pricing structure that they use. Not only are costs from Payline affordable, but they're also 100% transparent – with no hidden fees.

There are two primary pricing plans available, each with a range of interchange-plus pricing on credit card payments and small monthly fees to consider.

Payline Data “Start” Pricing

The first option for pricing is the “Start” package, intended for offline brick-and-mortar merchants. There's a per-transaction fee with this plan, with an interchange price, plus 0.2% and 10 cents. Remember, the interchange price is determined by the credit card network that you're using, such as Visa or Mastercard. You'll need to look into this to get a full price.

If you're using the Payline virtual terminal, then you'll be paying the interchange price, plus 0.3% and another 20 cents for any transaction. There's also a baseline monthly feel of $10 and another $25 monthly minimum on your purchases. In this plan, you'll be able to process mobile payments, get free PCI compliance, and buy your credit card terminal separately too. There's also a chargeback fee required of $25.

Payline Data “Connect” Pricing

The “Connect” pricing plan is designed specifically for merchants in the eCommerce environment. All virtual and online terminal payments are charged at the interchange price, plus 0.3% and 20 cents. You'll also have to pay a $20 monthly fee and manage a $25 monthly minimum on your transaction fees. Once again, there's a $25 fee for chargebacks.

The Connect plan comes with a Payline Gateway for no additional charge, along with free PCI compliance.

No matter which of the two plans you choose, you'll be able to cancel them at any time with no additional fees for cancellation. It's hard to find that kind of flexibility among most payment processors. Additionally, it's worth noting that Payline offers lower-cost pricing plans for specific businesses.

Payline “Medical” Pricing

One of the most recent additions to the Payline pricing plan structure is the introduction of a new “Medical” plan. This option is designed specifically for healthcare providers and charges each transaction with your interchange price, plus 0.30%, and 10 cents per transaction.

For ACH payments, you can expect to pay 4% on your transactions, but there are no monthly fees, and you get a dedicated account manager to help you out too. What's more, users can link up to the virtual terminal from Payline Data for an extra $10 per month.

Payline Data: Additional Fees and Options

On the Payline Data website, you'll find a calculator to help you calculate your estimated monthly cost for your transactions. That's a super useful feature, and it comes with insights into all of the major credit card providers too. With the calculator, you can see that if you process 1,000 in-person transactions per month for an average of $25 per purchase, you'll pay about $36.50 in transaction fees.

In addition to standard payment options, Payline Data comes with several optional add-ons to explore too. For instance, you can include a mobile POS solution for $7.50 per month under the plan with Payline Start. You'll also be able to add a variety of fraud tools into your package, which includes things like Payer Authentication and iSpy Fraud.

Subscription Billing

For subscription billing, Payline Data offers add-ons like QuickBooks syncing, invoicing, and account updating tools. You'll also note that all of the primary plans coming from Payline feature PCI compliance with no added costs. This is excellent for companies that want to keep their transactions as secure as possible and avoid any penalty fees for PCI non-compliance.

Overall, even if you choose to include the optional extras in your Payline pricing packages, you can expect to receive a fantastic deal from this company. Although the interchange+ rates aren't the lowest on the market, they come with free equipment and software that deliver higher value in the long-term.

Payline Data Review: Features and Capabilities

One of the most obvious reasons to choose Payline Data as your payment processor is that it will give you a range of fantastic solutions for managing your payments. After all, while low costs are great, it's the features that will sway you when you're investing in tools for your business.

Here's a deep-dive into some of the capabilities to expect.

Payline Data Review: Merchant Accounts

Regardless of the kind of company you're operating, you're going to need a merchant account to accept payments via WorldPay.

Fortunately, Payline Data provides a dedicated merchant account for each user, complete with a unique ID number, and a stable performance history that's sure to put your mind at ease. You don't have to share your account with other businesses, and you'll receive funds in your business bank account within 2 days or less.

Something that makes Payline Data stand out is their willingness to support high-risk merchant accounts. This means that you can still get a merchant account with Payline if you're selling riskier products like e-cigarettes, adult products, or firearms.

High-risk Accounts

Payline's high-risk accounts process offerings with a simple application process, and the option to choose from 20 different banking partners.

With a high-risk merchant account from Payline, you can also diversify your business by providing customers with the option to make ACH payments. This is often a more secure and seamless solution than using a credit card, and it means that your customers can enjoy more payment options.

Since high-risk accounts can also come with the threat of higher chargebacks, the Payline company also strives to keep your chargebacks under control with a robust prevention platform that monitors your account in real-time. This helps you to win more revenue and reduce your losses over time.

Overall, Payline Data stands out by offering merchant support to companies that other organizations simply wouldn't touch due to their higher risk levels.

Payline Data Review: Payment Gateways

If you're a merchant in the ecommerce world, then you're going to need a payment gateway so you can take payments online. With Payline Data, that's no problem at all.

The immersive in-house payment gateway solutions from Payline are incredible and feature-rich, packed full of ways to take your earning potential to the next level. If you're looking for something flexible – then Payline has you covered from that angle too, with 175 different ecommerce platforms and carts to choose from. You can use Payline to accept debit, credit, and electronic payments, as well as processing invoices and establishing recurring payments.

Honestly, the options are endless.

One thing we were particularly impressed with is the fact that the Payline Gateway also allows users to manage multiple merchant accounts at once. That means you can run different businesses from the same environment. Plus, if you want to upgrade your customer management strategy, there's the option to save customer information, process vast numbers of transactions at once, and track your inventory.

According to Payline customers, processing up to 5,000 transactions only takes an average of 90 minutes – which is pretty speedy.

The mobile and online payment gateways are particularly impressive because they can integrate with more than 175 different online cart options. That means that you should be able to use whatever cart you like alongside Payline.

What's more, if you're looking to embed the Payline payment processing features into your existing technology stack, you can hand the open API over to your developer to do just that. The gateway and mobile APIs are excellent for companies that need full control over how they accept and manage payments within their software and mobile apps.

Payline Connect is the option that gives ecommerce and mobile app providers a payment gateway combined with built-in fraud protection and security. This solution is designed for online businesses that operate their own website and have integrations with sites like QuickBooks for financial management and account. It's also worth looking into Payline Connect if your existing processing configurations are causing headaches with chargebacks and PCI compliance.

Payline Data Review: ACH Payments

If you're interested in offering ACH payments as an option to your customers, then Payline has you covered there too. An ACH payment is generally a transaction processed through electronic networks in batches. The batches used with ACH payments can sometimes deliver smaller fees than credit card processing.

Thanks to immersive encryption technology and a fantastic selection of built-in security features, Payline Data can ensure ongoing peace of mind for their customers. The ACH strategy is safe and secure, providing far greater protection than old-school checks and other transaction strategies.

Payline Data Review: Recurring Payments

Recurring payments are growing to be a common requirement for many businesses in the modern landscape, particularly as software as a service and subscriptions become more popular.

👉 Whether you're making or accepting payments through Payline‘s ACH network, you can:

Manage transactions on autopilot with invoicing, and payments delivered automatically

Any business that bills customers consistently will benefit from the range of recurring payment options available from Payline Data. After all, when you're relying on monthly payments from your customers, you can't afford to deal with things like interruptions in your processing strategies. The subscription services from Payline Data are so easy to set up, that anyone can automate their entire recurring payment strategy in no time.

What's more, because the recurring payment environment is so hassle-free and straightforward, it means that companies can build a fantastic level of trust with their target audience, while making their processing strategy easier and more streamlined.

Why waste time on complicated invoicing when you need to focus on growing your business?

Payline Data Review: Terminals

Sometimes, finding the right payment processing solution isn't just about choosing the option with the best software. You'll also need to consider your hardware needs too.

Fortunately, Payline Data has you covered in that regard, with the option to buy a range of credit card terminals as “added extras” on your packages. There are a few specific terminals recommended by Payline, including:

Clover Go: The portable card reader from Payline that accepts everything from chip card to contactless payments, and magstripe. You can also take Android, Apple, and Samsung pay. The reader syncs with your smart device via Bluetooth and costs a one-time fee of $125 plus an additional $11 per month.

Ingenico Ict220

A slightly more advanced countertop device, the Ingenico is less intended for people on the go, and more for fixed brick-and-mortar locations. It can accept contactless, chip, and magstripe payments too. There's also a range of high-level security features built-in, and the option to print paper receipts.

Verifone Vx520

The VX 520 is an excellent high-quality countertop device that handles things like decryption, encryption, and processing at lightning speeds. NFC and EMV technologies are integrated to support a host of alternative payments. What's more, there are unique features built-in specifically for healthcare companies.

As well as a range of hardware terminals, Payline Data also offers an advanced "virtual terminal."

What does this mean?

Well, basically, with the virtual terminal you can accept any payments from an internet-connected computer, even in a card-not-present situation. The software can process a host of transactions when coupled with any USB-connected reader. The virtual terminal is included free-of-charge with the Start pricing plan. Alternatively, you can get it for $10 per month with the Medical package.

Payline Data Review: Business Loans

Need help finding capital to get your business off the ground?

Payline Data can help with that too. If you're struggling to find financing for your company, Payline will allow you to set up a partnership with a broker. All you need to do is fill out a form, and you'll be linked directly to over 75 vetted lending partners.

Your options are listed on your Payline account, and you can access funds within 24 hours from some providers. Loan options include merchant cash advances, lines of credit, term loans, and even equipment financing. What's more, there's access to the extensive "Lendio" business loan marketplace via Payline, so you can find all the extra financing tools you need to keep your business running strong.

You'll be able to browse through intelligently-chosen options for your business funding and select a loan that best suits your business. The loan feature means that Payline customers can save a lot of time and resources on tracking down the funding they need to get their company started. Payline even leverages proprietary algorithms to boost your chances of finding a loan that's right for your company.

Payline Data Review: Security and Fraud Prevention

Alongside a wide variety of payment processing options, Payline Data also delights customers with an impressive selection of security features. Who doesn't need peace of mind these days, after all?

There are a host of additional security measures built-into your transactional journey, to keep your liability to a minimum. For instance, all customers are required to provide a CVV at checkout, and card-not-present customers are asked to verify their address.

The various features included with Payline Data security are intended to help businesses of all sizes stand up to the threat of fraud and reduce their risk of losing money or sensitive information. There's even an automated account updater so you can reduce the risk of falling victim to issues caused by problems with out-of-date transaction information.

👉 Some of the fraud prevention and security options offered by Payline include:

PCI compliance: PCI compliance is included as standard with all of the payment processing options available from Payline Data.

High-level Fraud Protection

For high-level fraud protection, Payline Data also offers access to third-party security programs like Ethoca and Verify. For instance, Payline is an authorized reseller of the Verifi product, which delivers award-winning cardholder dispute resolution networks to today's merchants. The CDRN solution means that you can protect your business by preventing chargebacks. Additionally, Verifi helps yo maintain transaction volume and revenue generation.

With Verifi, you can avoid acting on supplemental or old, out-of-date data when making transactions. You'll also be able to pinpoint potentially false alerts that increase your processing costs and minimize the loss of profits caused by time-consuming refunding processes.

As an additional method for protecting payments in the healthcare environment, Payline also ensures that it keeps its software as compliant as possible with the latest healthcare industry standards. The "Medical" package from Payline comes with simple cost-plus pricing like anything else on the Payline portfolio. However, it also comes with access to regulatory and HIPAA compliance, to ensure that you're not falling into problems with your customers or the payment regulators in the market.

Payline Data Review: Integrations

One of the things that makes Payline Data so impressive as a payment processing solution is the fact that it comes with so much flexibility built-in. As mentioned above, there are open APIs available and developer documentation for companies that want to embed their transaction tools into their existing payment processing strategies. That means that you have the freedom to design an environment that works perfectly for you.

Additionally, if you opt for the ecommerce solution from Payline, then you'll be able to integrate that with a range of financial management and accounting tools like QuickBooks. Access to a host of integrations means that it's much easier for companies of all shapes and sizes to handle things like financials, accounting, and payroll from within their Payline environment.

Although there's plenty of features built into the Payline experience, to begin with, having access to third-party shopping cart solutions and other essential integrations makes life a lot easier for business leaders who don’t want to be constantly transferring data from one environment to another.

Simplicity and ease of access when it comes to managing big data is one of the main reasons that today's companies are paying more attention to integrations and plugins when choosing the solution that's best suited to them.

Payline Data Review: Customer Service

Payline Data provides plenty of great features to delight merchants in search of a payment processing tool. For instance, the low-cost pricing and transparent costs mean that you can better manage the expenses involved with running your thriving business. What's more, the fact that you can take payments in so many different ways means that merchants can give customers the freedom to buy, however suits them.

For non-profit accounts, there are even extra benefits and discounted rates, so you can do something great for the world, without paying a fortune in monthly fees.

Of course, all of these benefits aren't worth much if Payline Data isn't there for you when you need some extra help using their service.

The good news is that the customer service from Payline is excellent. There's phone-based support during standard business hours from Monday to Friday. On the other hand, if you need additional help, you can use an email address to contact the Payline team, or you can serve yourself with the range of guides and tutorials in the Payline knowledge base.

Payline Data might not provide 24/7 customer support, but most companies just can't accomplish this these days. Additionally, if you do find a payment provider that offers around-the-clock support through instant chat, you're more likely to be dealing with a bot than a human expert. That means that you don't get the quality of support you need to make a real difference to your business.

Payline Data puts quality over quantity with its support offerings, ensuring that there's always a reputable person on the line when you need support during business hours. Plus, if you can't get hold of anyone, it's fair to say that the company's website is packed full of useful information to help you out. For developers, there's even a handy API reference available that should be invaluable to your abilities to integrate Payline into your existing websites and tools.

Payline Data Review: Final Verdict

If you noticed a severe lack of complaints or niggles during this Payline Data review, there's a good reason for that. It's challenging to find anything to whine about with Payline Data's platform. There's no early termination fees, no complicated pricing, and no overwhelming interface to deal with. The month-to-month billing and fantastic range of payment options to choose from make Payline Data stand out from the crowd as one of the best options for any company – no matter how small or large.

On top of that, a reputable sales and service team means that you can always get the additional support you need- no matter what's going on with your business. While Payline is one of the best solutions out there, that doesn't mean that it will be the right fit for everyone. There's no such thing as the “perfect” payment processor, after all.

For instance, Payline might not be ideal for you if you desperately need a company that can offer 24/7 support. Additionally, most of the time, the hardware that you need to process your transactions will have to be bought separately. There's also the fact that there's a minimum monthly charge for each package, which means that your overhead could be greater than you think, and there's more pressure on your team.

However, none of those down-sides should necessarily sway you from trying Payline, as they're such small issues that they barely qualify as problems. For the most part, Payline Data is a genuinely outstanding option for payment processing.

]]>https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-reviews/payline-data-review-a-merchant-account-provider-with-a-conscience/feed0Pinnaclecart.com Review: Where Does this Ecommerce Solution Rank in 2019?https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/pinnaclecart-com-review-doba-quickbooks-facebook-integrations-drive-home
https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/pinnaclecart-com-review-doba-quickbooks-facebook-integrations-drive-home#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 08:24:20 +0000http://ecommerce-platforms.com/?p=9789Are you contemplating on how to furnish your business with an online store and upskill the checkout options? PinnacleCart has got some powerful tools to heighten your customers' shopping experience. If you're a newbie merchant in the e-commerce industry, you…

]]>Are you contemplating on how to furnish your business with an online store and upskill the checkout options? PinnacleCart has got some powerful tools to heighten your customers' shopping experience.

If you're a newbie merchant in the e-commerce industry, you want to pick a platform whose features aren't tangled. The acute rivalry between 3rd party sales channels can't go unnoticed. But that's acceptable since each has its selling points. The point is, you need one with a smooth learning curve.

Simply stated, you need a shopping cart manager which has nothing to do with prior coding skills because you might be a rookie thus taking those baby steps, which is okay as a matter of fact.

From an objective standpoint, you'd expect a platform which helps you fulfill orders, manage your stock levels, add products to the store, their variants as well, and so on.

What puzzles most is finding the most impeccable solution for your business needs. Don't worry too much though. You're in safe hands.

This review shows you the ins and outs of PinnacleCart and cites practical illustrations of how feasible it's to make huge strides in your business' prospects and operations alike.

Let's quit the bungy jumping and face the facts.

Editor's note: This post was originally published on January 12, 2017 and has completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

What is PinnacleCart?

You might coincide with me that this is a good curtain-raiser point to start our discussion from. Well, let me decisively attempt to leave no stone unturned.

Going by the true account of facts, PinnacleCart is primarily, a fruitful sales channel which goes beyond the bare minimum. It's a B2B SaaS platform which doesn't discriminate on the user's experience. Otherwise stated, it's a friendly software which lets merchants sell their products in the least demanding way. Without taking the ups and downs out of the equation, it still scores fairly good.

And my grounds are oversimplified, or if you like, black and white, so just you know. Let me sketch down a brief history of PinnacleCart for you. It dates back to 2004.

This multifaceted platform was the brainchild of two childhood buddies with a common goal to come up with an unprecedented and market-driven eCommerce solution. By that, I mean, they sort of wanted to bring a new frontier in the e-commerce market. Ever since its inception, they wanted to breathe some sense of flexibility to potential business setups, whether small or midsize, to sell their respective brands and niche ideas online.

Technically, Pinnacle Cart predominantly lives up to its dream. Just like other 3rd party platforms, it presents itself as a multitasking tool which takes care of your hosting needs and website's security status in equal measure. It's administration interface, otherwise known as the dashboard, brings a fair share of user-friendliness to all its users.

What else does it have?

From this single point, you can make all sorts of adjustments to meet all demanding needs in your enterprise. Think of it this way. What else would you be looking for besides an all-inclusive software which unquestionably, adheres to your noteworthy tasks?

If you're reading this review, it's undeniable that you're a dream chaser inclining the chances of coming out a few bucks richer per sale transaction.

PinnacleCart was built to make any online retailer happy ever after, as the three-word cliche phrase goes. This is quite handy because Pinnacle was built by marketing gurus, who fine-tuned it to steadily boost your store's sales and the average order value significantly. This shopping cart's infrastructure is, with pleasure, a faultless model for any start-up; newbies so to speak.

Since PinnacleCart is a cloud-backed system, you can sync your information with other devices instantaneously. Put differently, this lets you run your store no matter the location. Besides that, you can opt to go with the locally- installed version of the very same software. Surprisingly, PinnacleCart's functionality isn't cornered to any particular niche. This suggests that it can flexibly suit businesses of any kind whether small, startups or those at an Enterprise level.

There's much to talk about its features. Enough reason to break everything down in plain English. I'm ready when you are. Should we go on?

Have a look.

PinnacleCart Review: Ease of Use

On the face of it, everything looks overwhelmingly brain draining. And the same could be the most popular perception. But the opposite is actually true. So let me try to change the narrative. Now that I have your attention, let's set the record straight.

For a first-timer, the user experience needs to be impressively mind-blowing. As things stand, PinnacleCart seems to make its customers painstakingly utilize its features.

Once you log in, you're prompted to a setup guide which does the daunting task to make you grasp the basics. Typically, this part gives you hints on how to go about setting up your online store. With this at hand, you can, for instance, set up the shipping rates and connect to fast and secure payment processing methods.

Alongside that, there are a plethora of settings you can play around with. This guide leads the way like never before.

👉 And here are some of the most common scenarios;

You can learn how to edit your store's location and the brand's logo

Use Instagram as a sales channel by syncing the business account to your store's product page.

Make your site known to your target audience via PinnacleCart's SEO tools. You can set meta descriptions and modify your URLs with lots of ease.

If you're a fast learner, however, you can skip this brief session. I did a couple of tests on the free version and PinnacleCart did an exemplary job by putting my store's information in order. At the dashboard, there are customizable options you can hang on.

Here's a practical illustration.

Without breaking a sweat, you can import in bulk, and edit your product details, set the price per item, and write detailed product descriptions. While setting up the products, you can make modifications to the already existing sample product page. Suppose you want to boost your sales, PinnacleCart lets you set discounts, and follow up on abandoned carts by pushing email notifications to your potential customers who give up the checkout process.

What's more captivating, is the preview mode which allows you to see how each item appears on your store’s product page. As far as setting up your products is concerned, all the basic features you’ll probably need are detailedly captured on PinnacleCart.

On top of that, this stunning software doesn't discriminate. What do I mean? PinnacleCart is widely available in so many countries at the moment. The platform supports several languages and multiple currencies as well.

If you’ve been using a different platform to sell your products online, PinnaaleCart allows an exclusive migration process from over 40 sales channels. The shopping cart is mobile-friendly and responsive, that I can guarantee.

So are there any noticeable snags?

I managed to find one difficulty while assessing its ease of use. The agitating challenge comes when I want to sort my product attributes. It restricts you from setting options like prices, taxes and shipping rates for your products, all at the same time. You strictly have to follow its formating rules and enter the information in the text field categorically without breaching its preset rules.

As per my personal experience with the free version, I feel like this is a slight deviation from the acceptable standard on user-friendliness. What makes it even is that you can set an unlimited number of product attributes.

To put everything into perspective, I’m impressed by its ease of use if I weigh in how other platforms in the market operate. Despite its tiny fault on the product attributes option, PinnacleCart scores fairly good if we factor in the other functionalities it has in store.

PinnacleCart Review: Pricing

This part matters most. You can't agree more. Working with a sensible budget is a top tier priority in your bucket list. Being alive of the above moment of truth, let's conclusively see how much, and to what extent each plan grows your business.

The pleasing news is that PinnacleCart gives you a free 14-day testing phase. So no premature commitments; not even your credit card information is needed during the trial period. This isn't your Netflix subscription guys. Also, it doesn't harass you for any transaction or cancellation fees. In an indomitable magnitude, you can give it an in-depth run and deduce whether it's a perfect fit or not.

So here's the deal.

The online store builder has three distinctive plans for its potential users. Alongside that, there's an Enterprise level plan for high-end business owners with massive sales volumes. With the latter, it comes with custom pricing since merchants who've scaled their businesses to jaw-dropping heights have diverse needs.

In a fulfilling way, each plan on Pinnacle Cart has some perks which make it an even ‘give and take' situation. This being the case, you can put these benefits into good use. First off, Pinnacle lets you import an unlimited number of products to your store. Not forgetting that it's a self-hosted service, storage space should be the least of your worries.

But the leverage doesn't end here.

What's more engrossing is that you get real-time backups since it's a cloud-based platform. In regards to security, each plan is SSL certified and you can access the support team via phone or email. Do I have to pay for these extras? You might ask. Absolutely not. PinnacleCart doesn't charge a dime for these benefits.

Contrastingly, we've all had some nasty encounter with free stuff. But that's not the case here. Pinnacle takes the game beyond the threshold.

To get started, this link takes you to its official pricing page where you can scrutinize each plan at your convenience.

👉 So here are the options at your disposal:

✓Start-Up Plan

Price- $44.95 per month

Website's storage capacity- 1GB

Bandwidth- 2GB

✓Standard Plan

Price- $94.95 per month

Bandwidth- 20GB

Integrates with Quickbooks

✓Advanced Plan

Price- $199.95 per month

Bandwidth- Unlimited

Quickbooks online integration

Premium Customer Support

A binding SSL certificate

But that's just a scratch on the surface.

The above list only discerns the special features which each plan has over the other. There's more yet to come in a moment.

If you desperately need to do the hosting on your own, you can purchase a certified copy of PinnacleCart at $1,495 per domain. This licensed alternative gives you a higher sense of autonomy in a far-reaching manner.

👉 To be precise, it brings on board the following:

All features in the ‘Advanced' plan(hosted package). This is inclusive of the Dedicated SSL certificate.

1 year of access to the skilled support team

1 year of access to security updates and new versions of the software

20% off on the subsequently licensed solution

If that's a bit off reach, you can stick to its servers and still make the most out of your online store.

PinnacleCart Review: Major Features

Payment Options

As a merchant, you’ll allude to the fact that maintaining secure payment transactions, is so imperative while making your business thrive for decades. No matter the payment method you want to integrate your online store with, PinnacleCart promises not to charge a dime in the name of transaction fees.

The fact on the ground is that it allows you to work with over 25 different payment gateways. This includes notable payment providers such as PayPal, Stripe, authorize.net, Braintree, the list is endless.

👉 Other profound gateways you can work with are:

American Express

eMerchant

FuturePay

iTransact

Skrill

PsiGate

PayJunction

NetBilling

CT Checkout

And much more.

The best part is that it links your account to Worldpay, a global payment platform that integrates with your point of sale to enhance credit card processing.

PinnacleCart allows you to hook your store with Cardconnect, a trusted, reliable, and futuristic credit card gateway. It comes with low transaction fees for PinnacleCart customers. For each payment, it charges 2.7% + 10¢. With this service at hand, you get real-time reporting of all transactions and a virtual terminal to manage all actions.

PinnacleCart's Security

As a security measure, PinnacleCart markets itself as a PCI compliant channel, just in case your payment provider demands the compliance verification. On that note, the software works in tight affiliation with McAfee, a certified global scanner that offers verification of PCI compliance to PinnacleCart’s account holders. Putting more focus on the compliance status, MacAfee validates this by issuing an assessment report and technical assistance to all users.

But this doesn’t come for free. The plan starts from $150 per year

Aside from the free SSL certificate, there are other premium options to utilize. The primary benefit is that your customer’s credit card information is always protected from all sorts of vulnerabilities while they’re shopping at your online store. This begs the question. How feasible is it to make quick integrations? Let’s have a look.

Since this is a self-hosted platform, it tightens its firewall to keep your site free from any malicious damage. Since PinnacleCart's inception, they've regularly updated all their hardware in a bid to back up all the data on the servers.

This elevates the security during checkout and in the same effect, it steadily maintains the uptime at 99%.

Integrations

Since you’ll have to deal with transactions every now and then in your e-commerce store, PinnacleCart gives you the outright solution you deserve. It easily allows you to connect to Quickbooks, one of the most flawless accounting software that is fast to learn and helps you automate all transactions.No more manual input errors.

This means you can generate sales receipts with little effort. Alternatively, you can use other accounting tools such as Exactor, Avalara, and Webgility.

For the most part, PinnacleCart seems like an action-packed software which doesn’t need so many extensions to optimize your store’s performance. You’ll realize that it doesn’t have as many apps like those of high ranking sales channels such as Shopify or even WordPress' very own plugin, WooCommerce. The truth of the matter is, it has less than 100 integrations, most of which are so handy and practical.

Long story short, I'll cut the corners for you and list down a couple of trendsetting tools which gear up to your needs.

So here are some other mainstream plugins on its app center…

Marketing

The software links to popular apps such as Mailchimp, Google Ads, and AddShoppers. So what can I do with these? Well, there are lots of functionalities on board. This is the ultimate way to boost conversions on your store. To reach your projected sales earnings, you need marketing tools to help you target an audience on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Email.

For that reason, its dashboard has an option where the user gets to integrate their store with some of these social media platforms. In the current state of affairs, social media has become an all-embracing marketplace in the e-commerce industry. For this to happen, however, you need to make shoppable posts, say, on Instagram to create a substantial customer base. It's an authentic and unwavering means to drive inspiring traffic to your website.

To a great extent, PinnacleCart‘s ecommerce platform makes all your social media posts of your products to be responsive to your potential customers. Practically speaking, you can make more sales through referrals if customers can easily share your product's posts, for example, via a link to their friends.

Looking at the current stats, Facebook seems to lead the marketing dynasty but Instagram tends to take a larger share among the younger demographics. Millennials are shopping from posts which create fast-tracking leads to the merchants' online stores.

Reports & Analytics

As some point in time, you'll have to track down who you're real customers are. You need to work with accurate demographics. And by that I mean to know how customers are interacting with your store's pages.

Since it's inevitable to manually do this, Google Analytics steps up to its game to show in real-time, all the insights and forecasts, accordingly.

PinnacleCart allows you to use GA to analyze your website's traffic. Thereby, if let's say you've placed some part of your budget on ads, you can monitor your ROI by this tool which tremendously performs like it's on steroids.

Shipping

Needless to say, that order fulfillment is a process which needs a handgrip effect at all times. You can't leave a chance to bad reviews from customers. Worst case scenario being a nerve-cracking chargeback.

To avoid such from happening, PinnacleCart integrates with Shipwire, a global order fulfillment platform. With its huge network of warehouses, you can make your eCommerce store available to nearly all corners of the world. You can track your customers' orders with USPS and make all deliveries a success.

Customer Engagement

Goes without saying that a good customer support system is always rewarding and worthwhile if you want to have returning shoppers in your store.

You can make good use of chatting apps like SumoMe and LiveChat. They have features to give you an edge over your competitors whenever you want to do product marketing or create gainful landing pages.

So you might be wondering whether you can run a blog here. Yes, you can. In two ways, actually.

First, you can use WordPress and integrate open- source software with your PinnacleCart account. In preference to this, you can go to the “pages” button on your dashboard and add a Blog section on your site. as easy as that.

Ecommerce Store & Hosting

Scaling your business on PinnacleCart is such a constructive and generative process. Bear in mind the fact that it's cloud-based. One particular part you might need to check on is your store's loading speed. This could only be possible if the hosting services are right on track.

Indeed, PinnacleCart is quite up to the task since it offers a secure platform to keep your data via level 1 PCI compliant servers. This guarantees you a 24/7 uptime monitoring and freedom to use your domain.

You can amplify your customers' shopping experience with Pinnacle's mobile-friendly store builder. It has inbuilt tools to optimize your store's results. They’re drag and drop buttons which lets the user reach the top of their goals. You can cash in on its beautiful widgets to make your site look more engaging.

Its learning curve is fairly smooth and you don't necessarily need any professional skills to set up your online store. If you have some extra HTML or CSS editing skills, PinnacleCart lets you customize your store to suit the needs around your business needs.

Second in command to PinnacleCart’s store builder, are its multi-sided and resourceful theme which you can make changes to, using its visual editing properties.

How about its themes?

First off, there are about 30 free theme templates that pair up with a couple of niches which you can edit to your liking. However, some are a bit old and thus making it hard to make adjustments.

Making your store's homepage look glossy is pretty easy here. PinnacleCart gives you options to design your website. If you wish to seek expert services while building your store, the software has a community of developers who are proficient with all the needful requirements while creating an online presence for your business. The team can help you customize all the features you want your site to have.

Besides the available apps on PinnacleCart‘s marketplace, you can make arrangements to have any third party app integrate to your store so long as it has an API. Your backend's control panel can be tweaked to help you organize all your administrative tasks.

Besides your product page, you can export your items to retails Giants such as Amazon, Google Merchant, eBay or even Shop Zilla.

PinnacleCart's Reports

Its dashboard comes with a reports button which shows you the performance of each action taking place behind the scenes. It generates the summary of your average order value, the total number of orders, and revenue per order periodically. This could be weekly, monthly or even annually. It's totally up to you to decide.

As a result, you can issue coupons and offers to your customers in a systematic manner. You'll know when exactly to be generous. Moreover, PinnacleCart sorts the total number of orders by the customers' profile.

In this fashion, you can spot all returning clients like a professional. The system goes beyond to list down the high selling products as well as those which aren't doing well over time. It gives you real-time results for all QR and promo campaigns you launch.

PinnacleCart Review: Customer Support

The company has a couple of support options. If you have any issues with its services, you can reach the Customer assistance team via mobile phone or through a live chat and get help from experts. As you may know, after-sales services is certainly a paramount dimension in such a business structure.

If none of that works out, you can send them an email explaining your technical hitches. Typically, you'll get a response within 24-48 hours. PinnacleCart runs a successful blog which has lots of useful and perceptive information which you can make the best of. It has a team of competent authors who update the blog page with a wide variety of e-commerce related content.

The frequently asked questions (FAQs) section, on the other hand, is a quick-witted problem solver. This knowledge base is as descriptive as the popular Quora platform, to be precise. Similar to this option, is it's User Forum, although it's not as dynamic as you'd expect it to be.

PinnacleCart Review: Pros and Cons

👍 Pros

It has devoted and definitive customer support. I was impressed by the prompt response I got while I was testing its free trial version

The ease of use is up to par with acceptable standards in the market

Has more than enough payment gateways to incorporate in your store.

It's a self-hosted platform which maintains your store's security

Quick integrations in check. As a merchant, you'll appreciate this since it connects you to foolproof accounting software like QuickBooks and a well-established order fulfillment software like Shipwire.

It has HTML, CSS, and code editing tools

The themes are easily customizable

Its back-end interface is beyond user-friendly

Has meaningful and productive SEO tools

👎 Cons

The setup guide isn't that much conclusive. This makes the learning curve for starters to be a little bumpy

A couple of complaints from developers that customizing PinnacleCart through code gets a little tangled sometimes

It's not globally compatible.

Live chat is not accessible 24/7

The POS system isn't in-built

PinnacleCart Review: Conclusion

So here comes the verdict.

Well, I'll even-handedly rank PinnacleCart as an intermediate-range e-commerce channel for starters and those merchants who are looking to scale to an Enterprise level.

The software supports a secure and easy checkout by linking your store to several payment gateways that are globally eminent. You can choose any of its plans if you're looking for a platform which helps you with abandoned cart recovery, has a good range of customer support options, is easy to use, and has several templates to pick from.

On the flip side, PinnacleCart has some minor flaws, which I hope the team will spare some time to look into. I'll briefly give you a recap.

Besides the cons I've listed above, It lacks a rich directory of integrations and themes which limits users from the flexibility to make customizations. Nevertheless, this isn't a mishap to every user. All merchants have their preferences and needs, some of which, are unheard-of.

Considering all of its functionalities, PinnacleCart cuts above the necessary minimum. Uploading your products, linking to social media platforms, setting up all variants and meta tags is with reason, viable, however, you must strictly meet the attributes guidelines. I found that to be a bit off.

The bright side to it is that I have grounds to support the fact that PinnacleCart is a channel which meets its users' expectations. It's the right software for any merchant who needs to set up a market absorbing online store. I'd recommend that you give it a shot to see if it's entirely consistent with your needs.